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COPXRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Health and Suggestion 



Health and Suggestion: 

The Dietetics of the Mind 



BY 

ERNST von FEUCHTERSLEBEN 

(Sometime Professor of Medicine in the University 
of Vienna) 



TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY 

LUDWIG LEWISOHN, M.A. 



NEW YORK 
B. W. HUEBSCH 

IQIO 



Copyright, 1910, by \ C\ V- 

B, W. HUEBSCH 



PRINTED IN U. S. A. 



©CI.A265712 



PREFACE 

The wave of human thought advances, re- 
cedes and advances, making some headway, 
doubtless, but rarely adventuring upon a di- 
rection wholly new. Hence it does not 
greatly surprise us to learn that the vivid in- 
terest taken in mental healing in America 
within recent years, was shared by another 
generation and in another land. Any ex- 
haustive study of that other and foreign move- 
ment would be out of place here. It suffices 
o mark its existence and to say a word con- 
cerning its chief representatives. 

It is hard to say how early, in Germany, 
the facts of common experience which seem 
to point to a curative power in the mind of 
man, crystallized into any definite doc- 
trine. It is worthy of note, however, that no 
less a man than Goethe dwells upon phe- 

[5] 



Health and Suggestion 

nomena of this kind in his autobiography. 
Others, at all events, followed in fragmen- 
tary fashion in his wake, until, at the end of 
the eighteenth century, the well-known novel- 
ists and satirists Hippel and Lichtenberg took 
a fairly definite stand in a number of essay- 
like writings and insisted upon the influence 
of the souPs temper and development upon 
the physical organism of man. These vari- 
ous currents of thought were concentrated by 
Huf eland in his Makrobiotik which, in 
its turn, drew from Kant — the greatest name 
in the movement — his brief essay on " that 
faculty of man's soul through which, by a 
mere act of willing, a mastery over our mor- 
bid sensations may be gained." 

Kant's little treatise is practical and ex- 
traordinarily modern in its attitude to the 
phenomena of mental healing. It had, of 
course, in its day and country, a wide influ- 
ence which grew with the fame of its author. 
Thus, in the first third of the nineteenth cen- 
[6] 



Health a n'd Suggestion 

tury, we find mental therapeutics a recognized 
subject of instruction at the University of 
Vienna, and may assume that it became one 
through the dignity which the great name of 
Kant had lent it. 

The typical German classic on mental heal- 
ing, however, is not Kant's essay but the 
Didtetik der Seele by the Austrian physi- 
cian, Ernst von Feuchtersleben, a translation 
of which is here offered to the American pub- 
lic. To call this little book a classic in its 
specific field, is not, in any degree, an exag- 
geration. It has passed through innumera- 
ble editions; it is represented in all those ad- 
mirable series of inexpensive books in which 
Germany is so rich, (Reclam, Meyer, Biblio- 
thek der Gesamt-Litteratur) ; it is a favorite 
gift-book to this day; its vogue, in a word, 
has been wide, lasting and therefore signifi- 
cant. Without clamor or insistence the es- 
sential facts of psychotherapeutics have been 
present in Germany, as they are — every- 

[7] 



Health and Suggestion 

where and always. But there, as in America 
to-day, they were thoughtfully reflected upon 
and interpreted. 

Nor have the two movements failed to 
touch. Dr. Worcester tells us (Century: vol. 
lxxviii, p. 426) how, during his arduous prep- 
aration for the remarkable work which he at 
last took up, he read all books pertinent to 
his subject in various languages " with the ex- 
ception of Feuchtersleben's Diatetik der See- 
le." " In some way," he continues, " this 
inimitable work escaped me, and I have be- 
come familiar with it only during the last 
year. It contains the principles of our whole 
project, and expresses many phases of our 
thought better than we are able to express it." 

Ernst von Feuchtersleben was born in Vi- 
enna in 1 806. He obtained his preliminary 
training at the " theresianische Akademie," 
and took his degree (M.D.) at the university 
of his native city in 1833. His success as 
a practitioner and teacher of medicine was 
rapid, and from 1840 until his premature 
[8] 



Health and Suggestion 

death in 1849 ne lectured on psychotherapeu- 
tics at the university of Vienna. In 1848 
he declined the portfolio of education, but 
accepted an undersecretaryship of state. 
The immense labor which the complete reor- 
ganization of the Austrian school system en- 
tailed broke down his health, and he resigned 
from office too late to regain the vital energy 
which he had spent in the state's service. His 
character is said to have been one of singu- 
lar beauty, his temper of exquisite serenity 
and gentleness. This is especially apparent 
in his poetry of which he wrote not a little, 
nor any that is not marked by both distinc- 
tion and grace. He is the author, for in- 
stance, of the song, universally known in 
Germany : 

" In God's high council 'tis decreed 
That from our dearest at our need 
We're parted," 

and of many excellent gnomic poems one of 

[9] 



Health and Suggestion 

which, in a somewhat free rendering, may 
follow here: 

" All things create observe thou, a poem as 

the skies, 
The babbling of the foolish, the silence of the 

wise. 
Know that man's eye can bear not heaven's 

ray undimmed and bright, 
That without dreams our waking hours could 

reach no full delight. 
Be glad of what is given, yet know what thou 

dost lack, 
Do each hour's nearest duty: halt not and 

turn not back. 
Let thought not be thy master, in sloth to 

hesitate, 
A hero he who, falling, fights 'mid the storms 

of fate. 
Close not thy heart in anger, love on until it 

break, 
Forget and hope and fear not: remember 

and — awake! " 

[IO] 



Health and Suggestion 

A word must be said of the character of 
the following translation of the Diatetik 
der Seele. Like all but the greatest Ger- 
man writers Feuchtersleben was far more 
felicitous in his use of verse than in his use of 
prose. His prose style is, as a matter of 
fact, amorphous, wordy and professorial in 
the old-fashioned German way. But an 
English-speaking public demands, rightly, 
clearness of outline and definiteness of ex- 
pression. Hence the present version, though 
conscientiously faithful to Feuchtersleben's 
sense, has been almost entirely recast from 
the point of view of form. By this method 
the translator has hoped to gain for his au- 
thor a wider and less hesitant appreciation. 

L. L. 

New York, January, 19 10. 



t»] 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction 15 

I. The Power of the Spirit 21 

II. Beauty and Health 38 

III. Imagination 48 

IV. The Will 66 

V. Reason and Culture 79 

VI. Temperament and Passion .... 96 

VII. The Emotions 108 

VIII. The Law of Contrast 119 

IX. Hypochondria 133 

X. Truth and Nature 147 

XI. Summary 155 

Leaves from a Diary 164 



INTRODUCTION 



Our time is swift, stormy and frivolous. 
Hence to direct the attention from the dis- 
couraging life of the present, from the still 
more discouraging spectacle of a literature 
wavering amid a thousand meaningless ten- 
dencies, to the calm regions of the inner man, 
the contemplation of ourselves — this is to 
render a genuine service to the public mind. 
In such reflections we become aware of our 
connection with the sum of things, of our 
purpose and of our duty. Serenely resigning 
the world, which can grant us but little, we 
feel that the peace we had thought lost takes 
up its dwelling with us again and that a sec- 
ond innocence sheds its soothing light over 
our being. The game of rimes to which 
only the hand of genius can lend a pregnant 
symbolism may employ the youthful hours 

[is] 



Health and Suggestion 

even of the less gifted : maturer years should 
be dedicated to reflection concerning our 
deepest and most sacred relations with the 
universe. In doing so we exercise our true 
business upon earth: a business within the 
capacity of all, since it is the duty of all. 
" Our writers," says von Sternberg in a bril- 
liant essay, " write in the market-place rather 
than in the quiet study. Hence it is that the 
noise, dust and coarse reality of the street 
pervade their works, and that the depth and 
clarity of our older authors have almost van- 
ished. This is due to the haste by which we 
are all so driven to-day. Not to be left be- 
hind in the race — that is our aim. The 
philosopher hurls his ideas at the state, the 
poet his emotions at society. Both are con- 
tent to achieve a momentary but violent 
effect. Who, in this age, has time to grow 
old and to write books that shall never grow 
old?" To- meet such just complaints and 
counteract such tendencies is the purpose of 
the following pages. They are written in a 
[16] 



Health and Suggestion 

spirit of repose, for the refreshment and 
collection of my own faculties. In a similar 
spirit they must be read in order to transmit 
their significance to the reader. 

By means of a blending of ethics and die- 
tetics, strange perhaps at first sight, I have 
sought to exhibit in its practical bearing the 
healing power of the spirit over the body of 
man. " The profession of medicine, " to 
quote the voice of the general public, " is vio- 
lently averse to a popularization of its arts, 
to any medical self-study. The physician 
apparently fears that to become aware of the 
uncertainty and insufficiency of his knowledge 
and methods means, for the public, a loss of 
confidence. Hence it is to his advantage to 
foster a delusion.' ! In some such way the 
public reasons, supported, unhappily, by a 
recent medical writer. 

Let us grant the contention for a moment. 
Suppose the delusion to be real. Does it 
advantage only us doctors, does it not ad- 
vantage you equally? If faith has cured you 

[17] 



Health and Suggestion 

is it less a cure than one effected by iron or 
quinine? Is not this faith a real power? 
May it not, without quackery, serve in place 
of a physical method? This power of self- 
delusion, capable of such wonderful effects, 
should one not rather desire to awaken it 
and to possess it for one's own welfare? To 
point out how far that be possible, how faith 
can be learned — that is the purpose to which 
this book is to contribute. My expressions 
are tentative. For the larger part of the as- 
similation of any doctrine that is to be trans- 
lated into the actual practice of life, must be 
left with the individual himself. 

I have sought to be, in the best sense of 
the word, popular. A genuine appeal of this 
kind does not degrade the writer to a vulgar 
level; it exalts the general understanding to 
his own. 

The purpose of my frequent quotations of 

the words of eminent men is to exhibit the 

unanimity of sentiment which the subject of 

this treatise has always enjoyed among minds 

[18] 



Health 



a n 



Suggestion 



of experience and insight. Little that I say 
is new except in that it is unhappily unknown 
to the many. One may assert fearlessly that 
no art becomes so rarely the business of a 
human life as the art whose practice I preach 
— the art of ruling oneself. And yet it is 
the first and last of all the arts. 



[19] 



Health and Suggestion 



THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT 



THE expression " dietetics of the mind " 
will be at once understood as the sci- 
ence of the preservation of the soul's 
health. This science is ethics. All the 
knowledge, all the efforts of man combine to 
this great end — to cultivate and foster the 
moral being which is the fine flower of life 
and the purpose of existence. We, however, 
will deal here more specifically with that fac- 
ulty of the spirit which has power to guard 
the body against the evils that assail it. The 
existence of this faculty has scarcely ever 
been called into question, its remarkable ef- 
fects have been recounted with astonishment, 
but its laws have been rarely investigated, nor 
has it often been summoned to take its true 

[21] 



Health and Suggestion 

place in the practical business of life. But 
every power that flows from the sources of 
our spirit's life may be cultivated, may, in a 
word, be converted into an art. Every art 
is but the result of some trained faculty of 
man. He has made an art of life itself, why 
not, then, make one of health which is the 
life of life ! Such a training I call the dietet- 
ics of the soul — a science which I can- 
not exhaust but to which I venture to con- 
tribute. 

In a well digested essay Kant himself has 
treated of that power of the spirit by which 
(through an act of pure determination) one 
may become master of one's morbid feelings. 
We go farther, for we desire to subdue not 
only feelings but, if possible, disease itself. 
The soul is often helped by means of the 
body, and this process is capable of being re- 
versed. This is a point of view to which 
physicians, myself included, have not always 
given the attention that it deserves. 

How the soul, then, can guard the body 

[22] 



Health and Suggestion 

against illness — that is my subject. Again 
I must caution my readers not to expect the 
completeness of an exact science in the treat- 
ment of a matter which, like all the phe- 
nomena of life, is subtle and elusive. In 
fact, I am quite willing to sacrifice the hol- 
low satisfaction of having constructed a sys- 
tem, and incur for these sketches the reproach 
of mere rhapsodizing. There are subjects 
concerning which to demand too much is 
really to demand too little. Such, perhaps, 
was the science of physiognomy. Like Lava- 
ter, its originator, we may be content with 
fragments. But let us guard against the er- 
ror of that fabled academy of sciences which 
spent its time in marvelling why a tank of 
water containing fishes weighed no more than 
one that held no living thing, but dispensed, 
throughout its lofty speculations, with the 
use of scales. In other words, let us seek 
first to establish the central fact of our doc- 
trine before we attempt to outline processes 
and methods. 

[23] 



Health and Suggestion 

Speculations concerning the distinction be- 
tween, nay, the very existence of, soul and 
body, have always been and will always be 
dear to the purely philosophical mind. To 
the sane and practical thinker they present 
themselves as almost ludicrous. I appeal to 
the undimmed, unsophisticated feeling of 
mankind. He who denies utterly the ex- 
istence of the soul need not read on. He, 
on the other hand, who is determined to as- 
cribe the facts of my experience to the body 
exclusively, may yet follow me and consider 
me as discussing the power over the whole 
body of that part of it which exercises the 
so-called soul-functions. Wrong-headed as 
such an attitude would be, it would invali- 
date neither the facts of the case nor the con- 
clusions which result. 

Consider, for a moment, a subtle but none 
the less exact analogy. In awakening from 
sleep that power in us which should liberate 
us is in a state of bondage. Yet it can free 
itself gradually, and through practice it can 
[24] ' 



Health 



a n 



Suggestion 



achieve this end more rapidly and effectively. 
Thus in the life of the spirit there are vary- 
ing degrees of a loss of liberty in impulse and 
action. There is the night of the spirit and 
here no counteraction is efficacious; there is 
the twilight of the spirit, still capable of sane 
desiring if not of willing. This stage is 
amenable to the help of my doctrines. Be- 
tween the two is a third stage — the true sick- 
ness of the soul. Here the will has not died; 
here, therefore, healing is possible, but not 
through the mind of the patient but through 
that of another. To offer a radical analysis 
of these conditions would be inadvisable. 
But even without verging on the dangerous 
domain of metaphysics we may master cer- 
tain preliminary and fundamental concep- 
tions. 

The unsophisticated man feels himself to 
be an entity and lives without further con- 
scious 'reflection. Speculation destroys this 
spiritual innocence and a division enters into 
our life. The facts discovered by a trained 

[25] 



Health and Suggestion 

consciousness of self establish the existence of 
a principle not to be deduced from mere sense 
perceptions. We call this principle the spirit 
but must not forget that we are dealing with 
an abstraction merely. For on this planet 
we know spirit only in its inseparable com- 
bination with the body of man. A sensible 
usage calls the one element of this combina- 
tion soul, the other body. Considering now 
that we know soul and body only through 
a highly sophisticated analysis of an appar- 
ently indivisible phenomenon, the influence 
of the former upon the latter should scarcely 
stand in need of proof. To seek to explain 
the nature of the connection of soul and body 
would be highly futile. For the thinker and 
his thought are to himself an entity. The 
process of thought can not become objective 
to itself, even as the right hand may grasp 
the left but never itself. Our thinking, fur- 
thermore, is conditioned by space and time. 
The physician may merely observe that the 
nervous system is the most immediately ob- 

[26] 



Health and Suggestion 

I ■ m i n i ■-■ — — . i ■ ■ n 

vious link in the common action of soul and 
body. Any further speculation would be 
idle. Having established our central con- 
ceptions we may leave these problems without 
another word. 

It is equally impossible here to examine 
the genesis of sickness and cure. Nor is it 
necessary. It suffices us to remark that all 
diseases are due to one of two causes, an 
outer or an inner one. , Disease is due either 
to the development, under external stimulus 
no doubt, of a germ inherent in the nature 
of the individual, or else the organism suc- 
cumbs to the hostile forces of its environment^ 
The latter process, however, also necessitates 
an innate predisposition conditioned in weak- 
ness. To diseases of the first order belong 
all those commonly known as inherited or 
constitutional. Many other pathological 
conditions may also be regarded from this 
point of view oftener and more fruitfully 
than has been done heretofore. 

The question now is: whether such con- 

[27] 



Health and Suggestion 

ditions may be mastered through the might 
of the spirit. It goes without saying that 
I do not here refer to such prophylactic 
measures as physicians use either to improve 
the patient's predispositions or to guard 
against harmful influences from without. 
Such preventive actions also originate in the 
mind, but not in that of the patient. Philos- 
ophers and philosophical poets are always 
anxious to show us how a one-sided and over- 
grown ethical tendency may be repressed, 
limited, or even eradicated. A similar pro- 
cedure should be practicable in our own 
special field. 

How does any individual's nature and its 
disposition toward health manifest itself 
most vividly? Clearly through that which 
we call the temperament of a man, using the 
term with the vital meaning of our daily 
speech and not in accordance with some 
learned analysis. Man is an entity com- 
posed of many elements, and the subtlest 
psychologist can but consider a given tern- 

[28] 



Health and Suggestion 

perament as made up of such elements as 
are similarly " tempered," thus blending 
into an individual life. " Every human 
being," says Herder, " bears in the form of 
his body as well as in the endowments of 
his soul the possibilities of that harmony 
which should be the goal of his efforts. This 
is true of all forms of human existence, of 
deformity so feeble that it can scarcely sus- 
tain life, as well as of the divine form of 
a Greek demi-god. Through lapses and 
errors, through cultivation, want, and prac- 
tice, each mortal still seeks to attain that 
harmony of his powers which constitutes the 
profoundest enjoyment of our being." And 
which is no less, we may add, the very condi- 
tion of health. 

Man, then, the only being in the scheme 
of nature who can regard himself objectively, 
should be able to rise to such a higher con- 
ception of self. He whom Protagoras called 
the measure of the universe should be able 
to become the criterion of himself. And 

[29] 



Health and Suggestion 

surely no one who has ever withdrawn into 
himself from the confusion of the external 
world will deny the influence of the soul from 
this point of view. He will admit that mas- 
tery over self can be gained and hence over 
such disease as is rooted in the self of the 
individual. The fact of such a procedure 
once established, we shall examine its methods 
in future chapters. 

To attribute to the soul, however, a power 
and mastery beyond its own immediate 
domain will seem more marvellous and more 
questionable. But the world in which we 
live is, after all, nothing but a web spun by 
our own natures. To the man it is a scene 
of strife, to the child a play-ground, to the 
glad of heart it is serene, to the tear-stained 
eye it is turbid. As it is perceived, so it 
works. The images and thoughts that have 
affected the soul most potently cause man's 
happiness or misery. And to control their 
appearance and disappearance in the field of 
consciousness must surely be within our 
[30] 



Health and Suggestion 

power. The anxiety and acuteness that we 
use, so often, alas, to darken and to dull our 
vision should be used to gain for us a brightly 
seeing eye. The wild storm on the heath 
which drenches the companions of Lear to 
the skin cannot touch him, for in him the 
storms of grief and indignation silence the 
lashing of rain and the roll of thunder. We 
may go a step farther than the lesson sug- 
gested by this illustration. It is well known 
that those unhappy beings whose souls dwell 
in the darkness of insanity are often free 
from many bodily evils that assail those liv- 
ing about them. In this case the soul, con- 
centrated upon its own mad activities, with- 
draws all attention from the body and thus 
renders the latter impervious to external in- 
fluences. And should not a will concentrated 
upon the pursuit of sacred and reasonable 
ends be able to effect as much as the distorted 
power of madness? 

A British author, discussing the influence 
of fog and coal-smoke upon the health of 
[3i] 



Health and Suggestion 

his countrymen, {Medical Reports: 1830) 
communicates the following conclusions of 
his investigations. " It is open to question 
whether many of the diseases that are at- 
tributed to the atmosphere of our city may 
not rather be ascribed to its manners. For 
just as the body, amid all variations of tem- 
perature changes its degree of inner warmth 
but little, so there is in the nature of man 
a power of resistance which, in a state of 
healthy activity, usually suffices to maintain 
an equilibrium between himself and the 
hostile forces in his environment. Physicians 
have not a little to say of sick ladies who, 
too feeble to cross a room, dance without 
difficulty through half a night in the arm 
of a favorite partner. Thus a desired stim- 
ulus arouses the indolent fibers to activity. 
The same principle accounts for the fact that 
the idle, the empty-minded and the fashion- 
able suffer most acutely from the atmosphere 
of London. The man whose powers and 
whose attention are constantly transmuted 

[32] 



Health and Suggestion 

into activity knows nothing of the state of 
the barometer. It is true enough that the 
dreary month of November is a period of 
melancholy and suicide; but the drab color- 
ing of the sky cannot overshadow the clear 
aether of a serene spirit. Even the patho- 
logical excitement of mania transcends the 
influence of the atmosphere. Not autumn 
with its falling leaves, but the associations 
which man, the great self-torturer, has con- 
nected with its appearance, weigh so oppres- 
sively upon us. The morbid anxieties of 
the hypochondriac, which rise and fall with 
the weather, are in the end due only to an 
inner activity or the lack of it which controls 
his mood. Such a patient is generally, even 
if it be but at intervals, weak of character. 
Let him earnestly lay hold upon this vital 
truth and strive for his own welfare. He 
will become his own best physician." 

What practitioner is not tempted to mul- 
tiply similar instances from the field of his 
own experience? They are almost as fre- 
1331 



Health and Suggestion 

quent as any other kind, especially in those 
great cities whose darkening atmosphere 
seems to consist of the passions, the anxieties, 
and the thoughts of their inhabitants. A 
figure such as Goethe's Werther may gain 
from us the sympathy due to misfortune and 
disease, but suicidal tendencies are the inher- 
itance of natures too sensitive, souls too 
gentle, who cannot hold their own against 
the harshness of life's realities. Stronger 
minds are not unassailed, and many an active 
physician has known periods during which 
only the most self-sacrificing devotion to his 
duties was able to sunder the clouds that 
threatened to obscure his moral and physical 
well-being. In such fateful days his activity 
saves him even from those dangers to which 
itself has given rise. Thus the wounds 
which duty inflicts upon us always hold the 
balm of their own healing. 

It is instructive to quote Goethe at this 
point. He did not feel the impetus that 
comes from the fulfillment of professional 
C34] 



Health and Suggestion 

duties, but achieved his end through the sheer 
exertion of unnecessitated will. " I was 
once," he tells us, " inevitably exposed to the 
infection of a malignant fever, and warded 
off the disease only by means of determined 
volition. It is almost incredible how much, 
in such cases, the moral will can effect! It 
seems to permeate one's whole being and to 
render the condition of the body active 
enough to repel all harmful influences. Fear 
is a condition of sloth in which any enemy 
may take possession of us." To instance 
such facts from the life of Goethe has an 
unique value. For in the life of that great 
soul all that in others is mere self-delusion 
was actual and objectively true. 

From all these examples we may conclude 
that life itself is but that power in the in- 
dividual which is able to make the external 
subject to an inner law, which can assimilate 
that which is alien and thus, though con- 
stantly dynamic, change only its conditions 
and never its essence. A bodily power of 

[35] 



Health and Suggestion 

this kind must surely find its strongest sup- 
port in the spiritual nature of man. An in- 
ner activity is the condition of self-preserva- 
tion ; the development of the spiritual in man 
is, again, the condition of inner activity. 
The potency of thought in any human being 
is the measure of the originality and sponta- 
neity of his own life. He lives, he is, in 
proportion as his soul is active. 

It is true that a thousand varying influences 
lie in wait for the poor mortal, that the whole 
world is such an influence, but the strongest 
of all is the character of man. Character 
is man. For as all beings are but the symbols 
of power, so man has nothing of his own 
but the energy through which he reveals him- 
self. And if the native energy of his soul 
flag, let him impose upon himself conditions 
that demand its expenditure — let him seek 
circumstances in which volition is unavoid- 
able ! It is an old and true observation that 
the traveler and the bridegroom are generally 
immune to disease and death. 

[36] 



Health and Suggestion 

" Rarely or almost never," says Bulwer, 
" will disease fasten itself upon us in youth 
unless we ourselves dwell upon it and invite 
it. One sees men of the most delicate con- 
stitutions who, amid the imperious claims of 
their calling, have no time to be ill. Let 
them be idle, let them begin to brood, and 
they die. Rust corrodes only the unused 
steel. And even if that were not so; if activ- 
ity and sloth were subject to the same evils, 
yet the former can more readily escape them 
or at least offer a nobler consolation.' , But 
I must not let the agreement of an admirable 
writer persuade me to promise more than I 
can perform. My concern so far has been 
merely an empirical corroboration of the fact 
that the spirit has power to ward off the in- 
fluences of disease. In the pursuit of that 
end I have said too much rather than too 
little. 



[37 I 



II 

BEAUTY AND HEALTH 

IN the first of these fragments it was my 
purpose to claim for the spirit of man 
a power of resistance against the forces 
of the external world. It was my purpose, 
too, to go farther and to proceed from the 
power of resistance to one of actual influence. 
Thoughtful mystics have spoken of the secret 
power exerted by the will resigned to God 
as well as by sin upon our mother earth. 
Since, in their view, our body is the instru- 
ment by which the world is formed and trans- 
formed, they ventured the conclusion that to 
rule the body is to rule the world. But I 
stopped short, fearing the reproach of infer- 
ences too daring. By accident, however, a 
book has come my way in which I thought, 

[38] 



Health and Suggestion 

least of all, to find any reflection upon the 
fancies that we are here pursuing. In this 
book I find expressed much that I felt, but 
hardly ventured to put into words. Let me 
set it down for what it is worth. 

" Is it so foolish to suppose that the action 
between body and spirit is a complete inter- 
action, that, therefore, the permeating soul 
can affect the world without us and, in mani- 
festing its highest energy, even work its will 
upon the earth itself? To conclude rigor- 
ously, to be dissatisfied with imperfect infer- 
ences, would mean the acceptance of this 
truth. Thus one could suggest the hypothesis 
that the good man cleanses the earth and air 
about him, but that evil thought and deed 
foul their own habitation. Think of the 
popular belief concerning the scenes of mur- 
der. And for the perception of truths deeply 
rooted in nature, popular mythology is a val- 
uable source; for it takes its rise in men and 
women whose alert senses have not been 
dulled by the exercise of reflection. One won- 

[39] 



Health and Suggestion 

ders, in this connection, whether a well-known 
and admirable Berlin physician who diagnoses 
dermatological cases by the mere delicacy of 
the sense of smell, could not transfer this 
method of perception from the physical to the 
moral world." 

This quotation the reader may interpret 
for himself. I shall follow more ordinary 
paths. But let it be remembered that when 
we have brought the incredible into the realm 
of probability we have done much toward 
rendering the merely improbable certain. 

But to proceed to the true business of this 
chapter. 

" Persons of our sex," writes a clever 
woman,* " may retain their health by con- 
ceiving a strong disgust for disease and by 
embracing the conviction that health itself is 
beautiful and worthy of love and admira- 
tion." A true conviction, surely! For the 
form of man is the expression of his inner 
well-being. 

* Rahel Varnhagen von Ense. 

[40] 



Health and Suggestion 

In one of the pleasantest of the " Physiog- 
nomical Fragments," Lavater seeks to prove 
that there is a visible harmony "between moral 
and physical beauty and between moral and 
physical ugliness. This is as certain as that 
the Eternal Wisdom has clothed each being 
in a fitting form. One must, of course, con- 
ceive this beauty not as consisting in some 
fleeting charm, but as the spirit itself making 
the flesh luminous. Also one must discount 
the ravages which rooted folly and passion 
inevitably inflict. The physiognomists, at 
all events, have succeeded in proving that the 
organism possesses inherently the ideal form 
of its own final development and that nature 
brings this development about by a method 
that is at one with the necessary procedure 
of human thought. For our special purpose 
we may append as a corollary to this truth 
the fact that, if the spirit possesses the power 
of working upon the form of the body, this 
power may be made manifest as well in beauty 
as in health. Those habits of feeling and 

[41] 



V 



Health and Suggestion 

willing which produce character also condi- 
tion the movements of the voluntary muscles 
and are, therefore, the origins of those facial 
features which decide the comeliness of any 
individual. Any frequently repeated ex- 
pression of the countenance, whether it be to 
smile, to twitch, whether it be derisive, sor- 
rowful or angry, leaves its trace upon those 
delicate fabrics. Nor is this all. It leaves 
a memory of itself which leads to increasing 
facility of repetition and finally affects endur- 
ingly and formatively the muscles and the 
cellular tissues. But this apparently super- 
ficial exertion of the power of the spirit is 
not likely to remain merely superficial and to 
leave no mark upon the solid substructure of 
the body. It is open to question whether the 
bony cranium to which the muscles adhere 
may not itself feel the plastic influence of 
their continued activity. Persons of a pas- 
sionate nature, at all events, have more wrin- 
kles in age than those of a quieter temper. 
The epidermis, contracted and expanded so 
[42] 



Health and Suggestion 

often under the stress of emotion, has re- 
tained these lasting folds. A process, analo- 
gous to this facial one, takes place in all other 
parts of the organism. To be free from 
carking care and to breathe deeply and fully 
during a long period will not be without its 
effect upon the development of the chest and 
of the important organs which it holds. On 
the other hand, the languishing circulation 
due to a continued depression of spirits will 
not fail to leave traces of itself in the insuffi- 
ciency of necessary secretions and the dis- 
turbance of the digestive organs. And in 
proportion to their endurance, violence and 
conformity to the original nature of the indi- 
vidual, will such processes leave their indeli- 
ble impress upon his organic being, formally 
and functionally. All parts of the human 
organism (comparable to a living circle) 
interact upon each other. The nature ex- 
pressed in a pale and wrinkled face will be 
equally attested to by a low voice, a wavering 
gait, an uncertain hand, an incapacity to de- 
[43] 



Health and Suggestion 

cide, a morbid sensitiveness to changes in the 
weather, in a word, by all the heralds of dis- 
ease. Thus may the body be poisoned or 
else guarded and healed by the fruits of the 
spirit's sowing. Beauty, then, is in a certain 
sense only the manifestation of health. A 
harmony in the functions will produce har- 
mony of form. If virtue then may make one 
beautiful and vice ugly, it would be rash to 
deny that the fruit of virtue is health and 
of vice disease. 

Nature holds a secret court whose arbitra- 
ment is gentle, long-suffering, but ineluctable. 
She marks those errors that flee the eye of 
man and are not amenable to his law. Her 
judgments, eternal like all streams of the 
primal Energy, extend from generation to 
generation. Man, brooding in despair over 
the secret cause of his suffering, will often 
find it in the sins of his fathers. That old 
and tragic saying of the inevitable conse- 
quences of action holds good, not only mor- 
ally and legally, but physically. It will come 
[44] 



Health and Suggestion 

to be more and more recognized that the 
feebleness and the diseases of our children 
are rooted far more deeply in moral than in 
physical causes. Not cold baths will guard 
them, not bare throats, not experiments of 
this sort or that, but a culture of a quite dif- 
ferent kind — a culture whose origin must be 
in ourselves. Physicians have often had to 
bear — nor always unjustly — the reproach 
of a crass materialism, of regarding man as 
a mere bundle of bones, muscles, viscera, and 
skins, set in motion by the action of the air's 
oxygen upon the blood. In this treatise we 
may repel that imputation. From our point 
of view the physician sees and proclaims heal- 
ing in that quarter whence priest and moralist 
assert it to arise. " Who can fail to under- 
stand," wrote Schiller in his youth, " that a 
constitution able to draw pleasure from every 
event and to sink every personal sorrow in the 
perfection of the universe must also be most 
profitable to this bodily machine?" And 
such a constitution is virtue. 

[45] 



Health and Suggestion 

Morality has its geniuses no less than art. 
Marcus Aurelius, Socrates, Howard, Penn, 
were what they were and present the images 
of lives so exquisitely harmonious, because 
kindly nature, by gifting them with organisms 
of a native capacity for the highest develop- 
ment, met their ethical tendencies half-way. 
In common mortals we can observe, on the 
other hand, how the agonized wrestling of 
the spirit forces from the clogging body a 
few sparing blossoms of true freedom. All 
the more gloriously, however, will such stray 
gleams of the heavenly light break through 
our mortal integuments, and the saying of 
Apollonius that even wrinkles have their 
beauty will fulfill itself again and again. For 
what is beauty, after all, but the spirit break- 
ing through the flesh, or health but beauty in 
the functioning of the organism? Where 
the soul finds an instrument attuned to its 
purposes the ease with which virtue is prac- 
ticed will often obscure its glory. There the 
result will seem inevitable. But where a 

[46] 



Health and Suggestion 

single harmony must be extracted from many- 
jarring discords — there the miracle will 
stand confessed. And as, in some great, sol- 
emn moment, its hidden beauty will illumine 
a good man's face, so may the sacred posses- 
sion of health be often achieved by a single 
bold and deep determination. 

" Let no one," exclaims the enthusiastic 
and prophetic physiognomist, " aspire to 
make man beautiful without making him 
better! " And let no one, we may add from 
the innermost depth of our convictions, let no 
one without making man better, seek to pre- 
serve his health. 



1 47 i 



Ill 

IMAGINATION 

THE psychologists of our day are wont to 
reproach those of an earlier time with 
having split up the oneness of the hu- 
man spirit by the assumption of a number of 
segregated higher and lower faculties, such as 
reason, understanding, desire, will, imagina- 
tion and memory. So far as these faculties 
are thought of as being independent powers 
working out the laws of their individual na- 
ture the critics are right in their objection. 
For the spirit of man is single, whole and 
indivisible, and the only distinction to be 
made is one among the varying forms of 
an identical activity. But these forms can 
really be discriminated from each other and 
the process has its undeniable practical value. 

[48] 



Health and Suggestion 

And such distinctions have always served the 
cause of knowledge better than any indis- 
criminate lumping together. Hence we shall 
here follow the analytical methods of that 
older school. 

We may analyze ourselves (to use a geo- 
metrical analogy) in the directions of as many 
radii as are conceivable from the centre of 
our innermost being to the circumference of 
infinity. Despite that possibility, there will 
always be three tendencies to which all others 
can be referred: thought, emotion (in which 
imagination and feeling blend) , and volition. 
These three form the whole inner being of 
man. Thought is the food, emotion the air, 
volition the gymnastic of the spiritual life. 
So it becomes our business to discover how 
by means of each of these three forms of 
activity the soul seeks to repel the invading 
ills of the body. 

If now among these powers of the soul 
there is to be an arrangement in the order or 
rank or dignity, we must assign the lowest 

[49] 



Health and Suggestion 

to the imagination, a middle station to voli- 
tion, the highest to thought or the power of 
reasoning. This, at least, is the order in 
which these activities develop in the course 
of the individual's life. The boy imagines 
or dreams, the youth desires and acts, the 
man thinks. And if it be true that nature 
proceeds from the lower to the higher, then 
our scale of values stands approved. But 
nature also begins the processes of spiritual 
life with the imagination. From this point 
of view, too, we may follow her guidance. 

Imagination is the bridge between the 
worlds of the body and the spirit. It is a 
strange, changeful and mysterious faculty. 
One hardly knows whether to assign it to the 
body or the soul; whether we rule it or are 
ruled by it. But for that very reason it is 
eminently powerful in transmitting the energy 
of the soul to the body and hence of special 
import to us as a mediator. And some in- 
trospection will, as a matter of fact, demon- 
strate that neither thought nor desire may be 

[So] 



Health and Suggestion 

immediately embodied, but need the touch of 
the imagination before they can truly appear. 
Imagination is the mediator among, the mov- 
ing power behind, the various members of the 
spiritual organism. Without it the power of 
representation stagnates, all concepts remain 
torpid and dead, and all emotion crass and 
sensual. Hence the vitalizing magic of 
dreams, the dear children of imagination, 
hence the might of genius, of poetry the art, 
and of poetry the spirit of all lofty human 
endeavor. 

Imagination, we may add, is the least ex- 
plored and the least explicable of all the 
faculties of the soul. As many curious dis- 
eases show, it seems to cohere with the very 
structure of the body, primarily with the 
brain and nerves. It seems to be not only 
the foundation of all the more delicate facul- 
ties of the soul, but, in truth, the connecting 
link between soul and body. Kant, the 
philosopher par excellence, who was hardly 
the man to sing a hymn to that goddess " ever 

[SO 



Health and Suggestion 

changeable and ever new," yet observes that 
the power of the imagination is deeper seated 
than any other. A man, he was wont to say, 
deeply penetrated by a sense of social pleas- 
ure, will have a keener appetite than one who 
has been on horseback for two hours, and 
cheerful reading is more healthful than gym- 
nastics. From this point of view he con- 
siders dreams as nature's method of sustaining 
the vitality of the soul even in sleep. And 
in his profoundest work he asserts that the 
pleasures of congenial society are due to the 
increased peristaltic action of the stomach and 
looks upon the resultant increase of health as 
the justification of social wit and merriment. 
Another thinker fittingly called the im- 
agination the climate of the soul. In it, too, 
the diseases of the soul (in a strict sense) 
have their seat. For if they inhered in the 
soul alone, they would be errors and vices, if 
in the body, they would not be ailments of 
the soul. But in the twilight of the imagina- 
tion where soul and body meet, where the 

I 5*1 



&: 



Health and Suggestion 

body throws its shadow across the light of 
the soul — there arises that final terror and 
infirmity of man whose destruction is the 
ultimate end of spiritual healing. Imagina- 
tion is ever a tendency toward the unreal and 
in such a tendency there are the seeds of both 
happiness and misery. If it take root and 
grow rank so as to produce waking dreams, 
we are already on the way to madness. And 
even 

" The poet's eye in a fine phrensy rolling," 
— does it not often, as by some unholy magic, 
summon the demons which it can only repel 
by fixing its gaze on the eternal star of 
beauty? To sum up: What the world of 
external phenomena with all its potent in- 
fluences is to the outer man, the world of 
imagination is to the inner. Hence it is clear 
how the quality of its activity must be a 
decisive factor in questions of disease and 
health. 

When I said, a moment ago, that feeling 
and imagination blend, it was not said to 
[53] 



X 



Health and Suggestion 

avoid the necessity of a finer distinction. But 
in truth feeling and imagination are but the 
passive and active sides of a single element. 
Any one who is practiced in introspection will 
recognize here far more than a play on words. 
We suffer when we turn the sensitive surface 
of our emotions toward the harsh world; we 
liberate ourselves from suffering if we offer 
the resistance of an active imagination. So 
here, as always, man's sorrow and joy flow 
from the same source. That which has 
power to hurt must equally have power to 
heal. 

How destructive the imagination may be, 
is sufficiently well-known. The unhappy vic- 
tim of a monomania will not fail finally 
to create the evil he has so long feared and 
invited. The story of Boerhave's pupil is 
apposite. This youth, while pursuing his 
course of medical studies, was so profoundly 
impressed by the great teacher's description 
of diseases, that, in due order, the symptoms 
of each declared themselves in him. Having 

[54] 



Health and Suggestion 

endured, in the order in which the science of 
each was taught, fever and inflammation and 
nervous weakness, he finally gave up a course 
of study that had brought him to the brink 
of the grave. Again: In September, 1824, 
an English waiter read in a newspaper an ac- 
count of a certain John Drew who, having 
been bitten by a mad dog, fell a victim to 
hydrophobia. In the very act of reading, the 
unhappy fellow was overtaken by the same 
dread disorder and scarcely saved by the phy- 
sicians at Guy's hospital. Very striking is 
the frequent instance presented by those un- 
happy persons who are troubled by remorse 
for a youth spent in debauchery and by a 
fear of the lagging but as they imagine cer- 
tain consequences of their errors. In the 
truest sense do they create the bodily evils 
that they fear, and induce disease and debility 
through mere worry. 

Every practicing physician must have ob- 
served analogous phenomena in others and in 
himself. Many a medical student, specializ- 

tssl 



Health and Suggestion 

ing on the diseases of the eye, sees the 
mouches volantes floating before his retina 
and so really impairs his sight; or even, in 
extreme cases, lives in constant fear of a 
cataract. During the frightful epidemic that 
raged in Europe some years ago one often 
heard the members of a social gathering, so 
soon as the conversation struck that fatal sub- 
ject, complain of and really exhibit symptoms 
of the evil that terrorized their imaginations. 
I have purposely taken instances from the 
living facts of contemporary life. Much 
that is more wonderful could be cited from 
books. But the point I desire to make must 
now be clear. If the imagination can make 
man sick, can it not make him well? If I 
can grow ill because I imagine myself to be 
so, must I not be able to preserve my health 
by the aid of the same faculty? 

Let us consider now such cases as answer 
this question in the affirmative. I do not 
care to repeat here all that is said and can 
be said of the influence of confidence, music, 

[561 






Health and Suggestion 

sympathy, and hope upon disease. I may 
merely intimate that whatever can heal 
organs that have begun to disintegrate must 
be all the more potent to keep them whole. 
All such methods of cure belong to the realm 
of the imagination, but as time progresses, 
our children will learn to attribute to the 
same source many results that are but ill un- 
derstood to-day. Nor does that fact rob 
such methods of any dignity or value. For, 
because the imagination has cured me, it does 
not follow that my cure is an imaginary one. 
A patient, to take a typical instance, asked 
his physician to give him certain pills. The 
latter considered them useless in the specific 
instance but, being urged constantly, finally 
gave the sick man gilded bread pellets. 
After the lapse of a few days the patient de- 
clared that the pills had not only had the re- 
sults which he had hoped for and desired but 
had also worked as a powerful emetic! Was 
the result less real because it was, in a sense, 
imaginary? An English physician desired to 

[57] 



Health and Suggestion 

test the value of a new instrument of which 
he entertained great hope. It was to be ef- 
fectual against a paralysis of the tongue of 
long standing. First, however, he introduced 
a clinical thermometer into the patient's 
mouth. The latter, believing the thermome- 
ter to be the new instrument, at once declared 
with ecstatic pleasure that the paralyzed mus- 
cles had regained their power. Were the 
movements of his tongue less real because, in 
a sense, imaginary? 

This is not the place to consider how many 
of these effects are due to hypnotic influence. 
That the body can be affected by imagination 
and will consciously directed toward a certain 
end is one of the oldest observations of hu- 
manity. Practices based upon this observa- 
tion have been common in the Orient for 
many ages. The Eastern peoples are unques- 
tionably more at home in the world of the 
imagination than we of the harder and more 
practical Western temperament. Neverthe- 
less the influences which, in our daily life, we 

[58] 



Health and Suggestion 

see powerful and positive natures exert upon 
delicate and undecided ones, are all referable 
to similar causes. Even the reasoning of a 
distinguished individuality does not become 
ours wholly until the individuality itself has 
touched our imagination. The man of genius 
aff ects the world long before he is understood. 
He touches the imagination of men and draws 
them into the circle of his spiritual percep- 
tions. 

These phenomena are symbolic of the loft- 
iest manifestations of human life. A spirit- 
ual atmosphere, comparable to the physical 
one, surrounds the world — surrounds each 
century and even each day. This atmosphere 
is the combined result of the influences of 
all the individuals in a given epoch. Once 
formed, however, it reacts again upon each 
unit in the human mass. Thoughts, percep- 
tions and images float unseen about us. We 
breathe them in, assimilate them and com- 
municate them again without being conscious 
of any of these processes. One could then 

[59] i 



Health and Suggestion 

call this atmosphere the outer soul of the 
world. The spirit of an age (Zeitgeist) is 
its historical manifestation; the curious phe- 
nomenon of fashion a Fata Morgana within 
its wide domain. The smallest social groups 
are permeated by this spirit of the world and 
the age; our most intimate thoughts are 
touched by it. 

We may now consider how the individual 
in his narrower sphere of activity helps to 
shape this world-spirit. The hero's courage 
communicates itself potently and at once to 
his half-paralyzed comrades; the tremor of 
fear is involuntarily infectious. A hearty 
laugh, the sign of an invincible cheerfulness 
of heart, will change the spirit of a whole 
company and force an answering smile to the 
lips of the most disgruntled. The yawn of 
boredom will pass from face to face and work 
like the presence of a traitor among friends. 
Thus it has never surprised me to hear that 
honest and intelligent persons declare them- 

[60] 



Health and Suggestion 

selves to have really seen the ghosts which the 
exorcist banished by his questionable art. In 
a good sense as well as in an evil, faith is 
still omnipotent; it can still bring miracles 
to pass and still move mountains. Assume 
that your brother is good, and he will be 
good; trust the erring and he will err no 
more. Believe that your pupil has gifts and 
he will develop them; consider him a dunce 
and he will prove your assertion. The whole 
of nature is but an expression of the divine 
spirit and its highest law is this: to translate 
the real into the ideal, so that the Divine 
Idea may at last shape the world in its own 
image. 

Volumes could be written on this subject. 
What I desire especially to point out, how- 
ever, is that where the imagination of an in- 
dividual has grown too feeble to exert its 
healing power, the imagination and will of 
another may be used as a source of health 
and strength. A feeble imagination be- 
[61] 






Health and Suggestion 

tokens a hectic condition of the soul; for the 
imagination may be likened to the lungs of 
the spiritual life. 

The imagination, it may be added, is fem- 
inine in its nature; from it result that endur- 
ance and that high degree of physical sound- 
ness that is often observed in the delicacy and 
purity of the female frame. How often do 
we not see such tender natures, woven ap- 
parently of air and light, outlast, by the power 
of fair imaginings, the coarser-fibered broth- 
ers of the race. Is not hope, even according 
to Kant, the soberest of the prophets of rea- 
son, the true protecting genius of human life ? 
And hope is the daughter of imagination, 
the sister of dreams. Hence the power of 
fair and noble imaginings is not the least of 
the forces that produce longevity. But the 
beauty of our lives, too, is in the hands of 
the imagination. A famous woman of our 
own day asserts that along with the fitting 
maturity of age she has been able to preserve 
the flexible energies of youth. That, surely, 

c 62 ] 



Health and Suggestion 

i.s due to the imaging imaginative power 
which we enjoy in her works. The catastro- 
phies that destroyed such natures as Novalis, 
Kleist or Heine, would never have taken 
place, had the fire of their imaginations been 
used to ward off the ills which, by a prodigal 
and violent use, it served rather to consum- 
mate. And this brings me to a desired point : 
the imagination is the dreamy side of the 
emotive faculty, it is feminine and should 
never wholly lose a certain passivity. It is a 
soft and virgin flame which if carefully 
guarded illumines and warms. Let it break 
from such wise bondage and it will consume 
the world. 

We should not forget that humor and wit 
are both the children of imagination — wit 
and humor that free us from pretense and 
hollowness in the moral world, and, in the 
physical, act as sources of infinite refresh- 
ment and strength. 

Finally there is art, the noblest daughter 
of imagination, the loftiest of the efforts of 

[6 3 ] 



Health and Suggestion 

man. Art creates those waking dreams that 
console us for the contrast between the real 
and the ideal in our human lives. The plas- 
tic arts and the arts of music and eloquence 
appeal half to the body, half to the soul. 
Music, especially, as an acute observer points 
out, is directly related to the health of man. 
The reason is as follows: A human being, 
happily conscious of all his powers and fac- 
ulties, is in a state of high physical and spir- 
itual health. Music spreads such a vitaliz- 
ing harmony throughout our organs, it com- 
municates its vibrations to the nervous sys- 
tem and the whole man sings and sounds, 
however silent, in the direction of his deepest 
needs. Music embodies the harmony of our 
emotions : all the arts strive after a harmony 
of relations not found in the real world. 
Hence it is that they are guardians of the 
highest health, but they must be guided by 
a virile spirit that leads to peace and to rec- 
onciliation with life and with the universe. 
Their lovely light will illumine for us the 

[6 4 ] 



Health and Suggestion 

path of life, and in death they will surround 
us with harmonies, such as Jacob Boehme 
heard — harmonies that will blend at last 
with the ineffable music of the spheres. 



[65] 



IV 

THE WILL 

IN speaking of the will I do not mean the 
faculty of desiring, whether in a higher 
or a lower sense. I mean that active en- 
ergy of our being, regnant over all other pow- 
ers, which is more easily felt and recognized 
than defined, but which may fitly be called 
the practical faculty of man. Every one, 
even the weakest, knows that he possesses 
this faculty to will which the strong man de- 
velops into character. This power is the 
essence of the individual; it puts reason and 
imagination in motion and thus reveals the 
marvels of man's spiritual life. It is this 
power which the moralist, the lawgiver, the 
teacher, the physician and, above all, the die- 
tetitian of the soul seek to utilize. Through 
[66] 



Health and Suggestion 

it the mastery of the spirit over the body 
must be consummated. Consider the won- 
ders that it performs when, as instinct, it 
dwells in the night of unconscious minds. 
Shall it not equal those marvels when, as 
will, it rises into the clear field of the con- 
sciousness of man? 

In vain does one seek to reason a madman 
out of his delusions, the monomaniac out of 
his fixed idea. But if the patient's activity 
be appealed to, if the will be stirred, a hope- 
ful change is discerned at once. Such a stim- 
ulus must come, as a rule, from without. But 
if he who is sick in soul and body could sum- 
mon a portion of this energy from the depths 
of his own being, the benefits would be cor- 
respondingly great. Let it be remembered 
that the will can be trained and developed, 
and that there was never greater need of that 
process than in our day when reason and im- 
agination are in the highest state of cultiva- 
tion but the faculty of action in frequent 
abeyance. And if character be, as Harden- 

[6 7 ] 



Health and Suggestion 

berg, says, a completely cultivated will, then 
the building of character is a perfectly definite 
process. Reason can be alienated, emotion 
waver amid the claims of various contradic- 
tory impressions; not so the will, if it be flex- 
ible without weakness, strong without rigid- 
ity. The inner man is, in the last analysis, 
one and expresses himself in the world in the 
terms of one faculty. To strengthen that 
faculty and turn it to righteousness — that is 
our task. With Goethe in Clavigo one 
would exclaim: "Consider too curiously 
and your soul will languish and your very 
deeds be sick. Will, and you are freed from 
sorrow. The most wretched condition is that 
in which we cannot will. Rouse yourself and 
you will be all that you were, all that you can 
be ! " Body and soul languish in an hundred 
bonds which are indestructible. But there 
are an hundred others which a single act of 
determination will tear asunder. These are 
the bonds with which we bind ourselves and 
call by the traditional names of indecision, 
[68] 



Health and Suggestion 

inattention, moodiness and moroseness. We 
seek to excuse in ourselves these undermin- 
ing demons of soul and body against which 
the healing soul should direct its specific ef- 
forts. 

Indecision is a cramp of the soul which 
easily ends in complete paralysis. Not death 
is cruel to man ; man is cruel to himself. For 
he does not envisage his certain end calmly, 
but with half-closed eye and hesitant steps. 
There is no more significant instance on rec- 
ord of the corroding effect of uncertainty and 
the healing power of a decisive attitude than 
one communicated by Herz. He had a pa- 
tient in the last stages of a consuming fever. 
The hope which the physician felt it his 
duty to hold out, coupled with the pa- 
tient's consciousness of his desperate state, 
fed and redoubled the ravages of the disease. 
And so Herz determined upon an heroic 
measure. He told the patient that death 
was inevitable. A terrible excitement en- 
sued, then sorrowful resignation. That 

[6 9 ] 



Health and Suggestion 

evening the patient's pulse was regular; dur- 
ing the night it was quiet. The fever grew 
less from day to day; at the end of three 
weeks the patient was well. Of course, Herz 
must have known his man to risk the experi- 
ment. But the foundation of that experi- 
ment is deeply rooted in the general nature 
of man. Incapacity to decide often grows 
from the unhappy thought : It is too late ! 

But that very thought should aid decision. 
If it is really too late, determine to meet your 
certain fate calmly. If it be not too late, 
make your effort at once, for your success is 
worth it. There is a beautiful significance 
in that touch in the old legends that the knight 
who would win the treasure must not look 
back! 

Inattention, which is but an indecision of 
the mental faculties, is a condition of the 
soul analogous to tremors in the body. It 
is an oscillation indicative of the fact that the 
power of the soul is insufficient to assume a 
steady and certain direction, so that rest, 
[7o] 



Health and Suggestion 

change and entire cessation of activity are 
necessary. Experience teaches us that a 
strong volitional impulse may moderate and 
finally remove bodily weakness. How much 
more effectual will it be in controlling the 
motions of the mind. I have observed in my 
own case that those wavering spots before 
the eye called mouches volantes, as well as 
the dancing of the letters upon the printed 
page, both disappear so soon as I fix a con- 
centrated attention upon the objects before 
me. Thus an act of the will can direct, sup- 
port and strengthen the phenomena of the 
inner life. 

For this reason I have always held diver- 
sion to be a more than questionable cure for 
diseases both of the body and the soul. The 
collection of all the faculties, on the con- 
trary, and a wisely directed will, have seemed 
to me truly beneficial in such cases. For life 
works from within outward, but the attack of 
death is an external one. If the patient 
urges the objection that he has not the 
[7i] 



Health and Suggestion 

strength to summon his will, or to engage his 
faculties in a given direction, my advice is 
that he place himself in a situation that forces 
exertion upon him. Granted that you have 
no definite occupation nor the inclination to 
engage in one. You may still, in the service 
of your own good, offer yourself to another 
or to the state, you may still bind yourself 
and enter -upon a situation where the dictates 
of honor will force your will to take up the 
healing work. And do not hesitate long 
among the possible objects of choice. It is 
the first step that counts. Act counter to 
your inclination in the first instance and the 
inclination will come. Plunge into the move- 
ment of life. The social duties will soon be- 
come pleasures and the dreary thoughts take 
their leave. In diseases of the mind and 
nerves, reason is ineffectual, the passage of 
time only palliative, but resignation and ac- 
tivity omnipotent. 

It is an unfailing law that a stronger stim- 
ulus will displace a weaker. Permeate soul 

[72] 



Health and Suggestion 

and body with the diffusive power of the will 
and all the alien forces of life become feeble 
and of no avail. To shun all that is harm- 
ful, tiring, injurious to soul and body is im- 
possible. But to turn one's whole being 
tensely in a definite direction, to embrace a 
definite aim — that is a possible way of weak- 
ening the attack of hostile influences. The 
aim should be an active rather than a con- 
templative one. But even one of the latter 
kind can work wonders if the soul but plumb 
its own depths, if time and space disappear 
and eternity be contracted into the spiritual 
experience of a moment. 

Moodiness is the detestable demon that 
pretends to an aesthetic elegance and distinc- 
tion. To be sure, we all have varying moods, 
but woe be to us if our moods have us ! 
The poet should use his moods as the sculp- 
tor uses a block of marble — as the material 
of art. You and I can not do that. But we 
can use our moods to shape life, which may 
be the noblest and completest of all the works 
[73] 



Health and Suggestion 

of art. Lavater has written an ethical dis- 
course against "ill humors"; I am tempted 
to write a medical one. No man can avoid 
sadness, but every one moroseness. In sad- 
ness there is a certain magic, an element of 
poetry; but moroseness is the prose of life 
and akin to ennui and sloth. It is a sin 
against the holy spirit in man. 

The source of this poison is custom, " the 
nurse of man," and its resultant vices. If 
we were accustomed from childhood on to 
shun idleness, and always to exchange the seri- 
ous business of life for some cheerful and 
refreshing occupation, we would not know 
the meaning of ill-humor. If we had never 
grown accustomed to sleeping through the 
serene hours of early morning, we would 
never awaken in that state of moody indo- 
lence which usually follows a recognition of 
the lateness of the hour. If we had always 
insisted on order in the things about us, a 
finer harmony would rule our souls. A well 
ordered room strengthens the morale of the 

[74] 



Health and Suggestion 

inner life. Above all, we must use our mo- 
ments rightly. One is not, at any given mo- 
ment, inclined to everything: always, how- 
ever, to something. And that one thing 
should employ and satisfy us. For change is 
the law of life. 

Isolation produces moroseness and, accord- 
ing to Plato, self-will. Conversation with 
the world may have the same effects: it is a 
wise admixture of the two that will make our 
spirits healthy and serene. Above all, how- 
ever, will a recognition of the Divine Love 
that guards our steps free us from evil moods. 
A nature truly grateful for all the good life 
holds will bear the evil with hope and pa- 
tience. And if any mortal be so unhappy 
as to have brought with him into the world 
a native heritage of ill-humor, let him not 
think himself wise, but sick, and let him not 
refuse the most drastic curatives to free his 
spirit from torture. 

To turn now from the phenomenon of ill- 
humor to the methods of its cure, to the power 

[75] 



Health and Suggestion 

of the will over conditions which are deeply 
rooted in the nervous organization of man. 
Instances of this power are not far to seek. 
I have read of a man who by mere willing 
could produce inflammation on any desired 
part of his body.* Similarly there are peo- 
ple who have learned to regulate voluntarily 
the action of the heart. The savages of a 
certain tribe of American Indians, if they be- 
lieve that their necessary work on earth is 
done, lie down, although they may be in the 
:;ii vigor of bodily strength — and die. The 
victorious errorrs of Demosthenes over an in- 
herent physical disability" are well-known. 
An American named Brown tells in his me- 
moirs how the ventriloquist Carvin acquired 
his art. Physiologically, psychologically 
and ethically the process was a curious one 
and highly symbolic of the nature of human 
effort. First there was a presentiment of the 

* Feuchtersleben might have added the still more strik- 
ing instance of the physical stigmata of Christ actually 
appearing in many authenticated cases upon the bodies 
of nuns. — Translator. 

[76] 



Health and Suggestion 

latent power, stirred by mere accident; next 
a mild attempt followed first by apparent 
success, then by failure. Then came bitter 
strife to recapture the fortunate moment, a 
real success next, and then untiring practice 
until an ultimate facility was reached that 
merged into habit. Thus many modifications 
of muscular action that are almost unknown 
may be revived or learned anew by a voli- 
tional activity. And in the whole marvellous 
organism of man many other powers are 
latent which an iron will may awaken and 
reveal. 

The doctrine of the stoics, the loftiest and 
purest of pre-Christian teachings certainly 
proved, through its numerous disciples, the 
potency of the will. It was not the force 
of an arid syllogism that steeled the souls of 
the stoa's followers — it was the might of the 
human will that effected the highest ethical 
movement of the pagan world. Experience 
precedes ratiocination, nor has the latter ever 
produced the former. It was no formal 

. [77] 



Health and Suggestion 

demonstration which inspired that stoic who 
proved the might of his doctrine, as Cicero 
relates, in the presence of the great Pompey, 
" Pain is no evil " the philosopher declared, 
and conquered, in the presence of onlookers, 
a violent attack of gout that befell him. It 
was no formal demonstration that inspired 
him, I repeat — it was the living emotion 
of his faith's significance that urged on the 
will of the man to a miracle. The stoa first 
taught its disciples to will. Having learned 
that, they began to reflect and philosophize 
and so left us that great saying : The spirit 
wills and the body must. 

Not teaching nor reflection nor yet enthusi- 
asm, shining upon man like a light from 
above, can warm or vitalize. Deeper than 
that must be the source of salvation. To 
translate into living action the doctrines ab- 
stracted from the experience of the ages and 
here set down — that is a task requiring all 
we have of strength and nobleness, but a 
task, with God's help, not impossible of ful- 
fillment. 

[78] 



REASON AND CULTURE 

WE have delivered a eulogy upon the 
might of the will, we have insisted 
that it be exercised untiringly in a 
given direction. The question now comes: 
what are we to will? what direction shall wc 
give to our efforts? It is knowledge that 
must answer this vital question, knowledge, 
the fairest fruit upon the tree of life ripened 
under the light of reason. Imagination is 
lost in wandering dreams, the will leaves 
chaos still unformed, unless the directing soul 
stand behind both. This is our loftiest 
theme : to show how spiritual and mental cul- 
ture can avail over the dark forces of our 
material nature, and establish the health not 
only of men but of Man. 

[79] 



Health and Suggestion 

The investigator of human nature is met 
by no more wonderful phenomenon than the 
power of purely intellectual conceptions over 
the bodily organism. That is the great pre- 
rogative of man's nature, that in him ideas 
can be transformed into emotions and that 
through such a process the spirit may rule 
the body, even as ordinary emotions trans- 
late the action of the body into spiritual 
terms. In the possibility of such intellectual- 
ized emotion — the ethico-religious, for in- 
stance — lies the differentiation of Humanity 
from all else. Lower beings do not think 
the causes of their emotions conceivable, and 
purely rational beings cannot share our emo- 
tional life. In man alone the blending is a 
fact of consciousness. No further medita- 
tion concerning the fact that such is the case 
is needful here. It is our duty 7 to apply it. 
He whose cultivation has been in the right 
direction will acknowledge the might of 
thought over his entire being. 

Anyone who is accustomed in his psycho- 

[80] 



Health and Suggestion 

logical thinking to regard the spiritual and 
the bodily life as one, will have no difficulty 
in grasping the trend of my argument. Not 
so he who is wont to think of body and mind 
as two entities struggling in the bonds of an 
unnatural union, and who shares the opinion 
that every gratification of the senses is a 
deadly attack upon the spirit which can be 
cultivated only at the expense of the body. 
This unfortunate asceticism condemns man 
to certain failure, for every energy that lives 
in him must slay one part of him for the sake 
of another. It may be thought that the fre- 
quent instances of delicate scholars and stout 
ignoramuses confirm this wretched notion. 
We are asked, similarly, to contrast the stal- 
wart countryman and the narrow-chested city- 
dweller. But these facts are really delusive. 
The point really at issue is one's conception 
of the true nature and ends of human cul- 
ture. 

A certain scholar, for instance, has spent 
half his life in the contemplation of geomet- 
[81] 



Health and Suggestion 

rical figures, and neglected the contempla- 
tion of man; or else, he has delved into the 
mines of history and left the gold of the pres- 
ent lying untouched at his side. Seeking the 
kernel of things, he has not touched the husk. 
Yonder stout fellow, on the other hand, may 
not be as foolish as our scholar thinks. But 
he has made the art of enjoyment his study. 
The so-called country bumpkin may know 
quite enough to fulfill his moral and civic du- 
ties — no small equipment for any man. The 
arrogant townsman may not know so much. 
True culture is the harmonious development 
of all our powers. It will make us healthy, 
good and happy. It will teach us to know 
the sphere of our talents and their nature; 
it will show us how to subordinate, without 
destroying, the imagination of childhood and 
the impetuous will of youth to our mature* 
reason. Here, then, is that part of the soul's 
healing which will culminate in the sunny 
noonday of our lives. 

Is it possible to distinguish the cultivation 
[82] 



Health and Suggestion 

of the will, which we have already discussed, 
from that of the faculty of knowledge? The 
qualities of will and emotion result directly 
from the point of view with which we en- 
visage life, and that point of view, again, is 
the direct result of our culture. In ourselves 
are dread and consolation, in ourselves para- 
dise and hell. To the clear eye the world 
will be serene, and our convictions, origina- 
ting our moods as they must, are at the foun- 
dation of all our being. That, at least, is 
true, if our intellectual view of the world is 
truly native to our soul and has become one 
with our entire being. In that case it will 
be a support to the weary, a pillow of rest 
to the suffering, a source of new strength to 
the strong. The frail body of Spinoza would 
have failed long before it did but for the en- 
during might of his lofty convictions. That 
is the great secret. Think of the universe 
in its oneness, and your soul will be serene. 
Consider the ultimate ends of the cosmic 
process, and the evils of this world will dis- 

c 8 3 : 



Health and Suggestion 

appear. Have no regard for the approval 
of man and its lack will not wound you. 
Think of the complement — somewhere in 
life — of all that gives you pain and strive 
to serve the necessary harmony of the All. 
If the Egoist is most keenly aware of evil, 
because so few things contribute to the ends 
he desires, he reaps the just punishment of 
the narrowness of his attitude in which lies 
his undoing. To broaden one's attitude, to 
live with great thoughts — that is healing ! 
Life is a gift, but it is more than that: it is 
committed to our care. We have the right 
to rule it, but only in the service of duty. 

If the main cause of half the valetudina- 
rianism we observe be a morbid attention 
fixed on the processes of our own body, how 
can we better meet the evil than by rising, in 
the commerce with lofty thought, above the 
pettiness of personal preoccupations? It is 
pitiful to see wretched folk so anxiously con- 
cerned over their material well-being that 
they are in the best way of undermining it. 

[84] 



Health and Suggestion 

The very physician whom they consult is 
filled with contempt. They perish of a fu- 
tile yearning after life. For they lack that 
culture of the spirit which alone can liberate 
man from such miseries by freeing the im- 
mortal part of his being and giving it charge 
concerning the rest. No more need be said 
concerning the glory of the stoic's life. We 
attributed it rather to the will than to the 
sources of the will. But observe that those 
spirits, from Pythagoras to Goethe, have 
reached in the fullness of power the utmost 
limits of the life of man, who have lived 
ceaselessly in the presence of high and im- 
personal thoughts. Only a serene envisag- 
ing of the All can give us true health; only 
insight can give us that serenity. The acut- 
est of thinkers and he who plumbed deepest 
the abysses of the spirit; who through calm 
contemplation prolonged a life the natural 
measure of which was of the shortest, and 
who has ever been thought of as brooding 
and dark — Spinoza himself utters, in his 

[85] 



Health and Suggestion 

formally geometrical fashion, this saying: 
" Serenity can never exceed its just measure ; 
it is always of good. Sadness, on the other 
hand, is always an evil. The more our spirit 
comprehends, the more blessed are we." 
Such is the high and calm might of true phi- 
losophy, that it can assign a station to man 
from which, not without sympathy, but ut- 
terly devoid of struggle, he can contemplate 
the shifting pictures of the phenomenal world. 
From the fullness and unity of his truly cul- 
tured soul the philosopher will regard the 
past as a sacred inheritance, the future as the 
certain goal of a clearly recognized effort, the 
present as a possession entrusted to his care 
— a possession which he alone can truly eval- 
uate, whose benefits he alone can store up, 
whose pleasures he alone can enjoy with the 
keenness of unending youth. That is the 
might of philosophy. Not of such philoso- 
phy, however, as makes the head glow but 
leaves the heart to freeze. It must proceed 
from the thinker's innermost soul and 
[86] 



Health and Suggestion 

irradiate his whole being. It must not 
merely have been learned; it must have been 
lived! Its beginning and its end must be 
the proving and the knowing of oneself. 
How foolish, then, to yearn for a happiness 
of which we know nothing. Only in the 
mind can happiness be found, for happiness 
is itself but a conception of human thought. 
Whoever has contrasted, in his own experi- 
ence, the dull state of mere sensual well-being 
with the emotion that attends spiritual clar- 
ity — such an one will know that a profound 
and living reality underlies my words. Such 
clarity of the spirit, then, is the guardian and 
the cure of our being. 

The most important result of all culture 
is the knowledge of self. To each human 
being God has granted a certain measure of 
power, and a certain relation of the faculties 
among themselves. This measure of power, 
when neither overstepped nor undeveloped, 
conditions the integrity and health of the in- 
dividual. To have recognized its nature and 

[87] 



Health and Suggestion 

extent is the crown of human wisdom. Be- 
yond that no man can go : the inscription upon 
the temple at Delphi required but that. And 
the man who can fill this measure of his ca- 
pacities with such true culture as is not only 
a possession, but a condition of his whole soul 
— he will be able to guard his life and his 
health. He will live in a free and unfettered 
state, belonging only to himself and able to 
command nature to purge each alien or in- 
fected drop of blood from his bodily frame. 
" The highest good," says Herder, " which 
God has given to all his creatures was and 
remains the individual's existence." If that 
be so, then culture is the key to our greatest 
treasure. Nature has set for us the natural 
space of life by giving us an innate power 
of resistance and self-renewal. But we can 
lengthen this space and strengthen those qual- 
ities by the influence of a trained soul. 

If the cultured man achieves a knowledge 
of self, however, it is by learning to under- 
stand himself as a part of the great Whole, 
[88] 



Health and S u g g e s t i o n 

and by cooperating with the other parts. 
With this vital conception indeed, a truly hu- 
man culture must begin. From it alone 
springs spiritual content. If you observe the 
hypochondriac you will learn that, in the last 
analysis, the evils that beset him spring from 
a murky egoism. He lives, thinks and suf- 
fers wholly for the sake of his wretched little 
self whose interests he fancies threatened. 
Blind to all the sources of beauty and good- 
ness that nature and man oiler, without 
pa thy for the joy and — what is worse — 
the sorrows of his kind, he lies in wait for 
the least phenomenon in the dark corners oi 
his timid heart and dies daily throughout the 
span of life. Others are but the objects of 
his envy. To himself he is a source of anx- 
iety that ceases only with his own life. Life, 
h he constantly pursues and which, as 
constantly, escapes him. at last becomes indif- 
ferent to him and he lapses into an almost 
animal condition. He can no longer sa;. — ith 
:':.t sane and health": man: nothing human 

['89] 



Health and Suggestion 

is alien to me, for, in truth, everything is. 
In Orestes-like desperation he clings to the 
bit of mortality that is himself. What to 
him are nature, humanity, culture? Hypo- 
chondria is egoism and egoism is always 
coarse and crude. Direct the spirit of such 
an unfortunate, if there still be time, toward 
a contemplation of the All. Present to his 
befogged vision the fate of his race: in a 
word, cultivate him, and the demon which 
no medication was strong enough to attack 
will hide its face from the light of day. 

If a sense of community with the world 
and the race is curative in so high a degree, 
it must be equally potent in exercising a pre- 
ventive function. From such a humanitarian 
point of view, in fact, the most important 
practical results arise. Self-abnegation, re- 
nunciation, temperance in the largest sense, 
in brief, the conditions of true health, fol- 
low in its wake. If it is important to exert 
the strength of an energetic will at the right 
moment, it is even more important to know 

[90] 



Health and Suggestion 

in what hour to curb it. Such restraint, 
which shows that the spirit has risen to a 
true conception of law and abhors the fortui- 
tous, can only be gained through culture. The 
stimulation of the will is most effective in 
temporary illness of the soul, but reason con- 
quers those that are chronic. Even so, joy, 
while it strengthens vitality for a moment, 
exhausts it at last. Serenity, on the other 
hand, is constantly healing, supporting, and, 
in a sense, nourishing. A genuine elevation 
of feeling, it has been said, is the best way 
of avoiding collisions both with society as a 
whole and with individuals. But man may 
elevate himself only through contemplation, 
the daughter of reason. The thoughts of 
God fill the immeasurable All, and man, in 
developing his own thoughts, blends his life 
with the divine life and becomes a part of the 
spiritual springs that flow through creation. 
The Brahmin who submerges his soul in a 
sea of contemplation and blends his will with 
the Will of God lives temperately and hap- 

[91] 



Health and Suggestion 

1 ■ Ill ■[■■■I1M1IIH1II Ml ■■IHH ■■■III III IMIIlll IM| 

pily through a length of years which no Eu- 
ropean, busied with a thousand nothings, can 
attain. Similarly Kant, so imperfectly 
equipped by nature for the struggle of life, 
draws strength and the power of extreme 
longevity from great and impersonal thoughts 
and seems to corroborate the theory which 
asserts the common origin of the Indie and 
Germanic races. It was not alone the power 
of imagination which shaped the harmony 
of Wieland's life; it was the equal cultiva- 
tion of every faculty, the directing of his 
bright understanding toward the laws of the 
universe — these, aided by a happy tempera- 
ment, gave him that blithe old age which 
shines like some friendly legend in the annals 
of German literature. High meditation, in 
fact, is truly human and truly blessed. It 
leads man gently on to the highest point of 
his destination and helps him in the practice 
of his mortal life. How beneficent is it to 
attain to an insight into that great concatena- 
tion of the world's forces that seems to point 

[92] 



Health and Suggestion 

to some final divine unit}'! How excellent 
is it to regard reverentially those shining 
souls who have conquered mortal frailty 
through the might of the spirit and stand like 
the images of gods in the temple of history. 
Plato learned and taught though in his 
eightieth year, Sophocles composed the CEd'i- 
pus Coloneus in his old age, Cato in years 
equally advanced felt no distaste of life; Iso- 
crates shone as an orator in his ninety-fourth 
year, Fleury as a statesman in his ninetieth. 
Meditations which wrung from nature the 
secret of the archetype of her creatures ac- 
companied Goethe far beyond the ordinary 
limits of man's life. 

Let no one assert that our own time con- 
tradicts the beneficent effects of spiritual cul- 
ture on the body. It may appear to many 
that the refinement of the understanding, the 
enlightment of the intellect have rather 
tended to produce a feeble and sickly genera- 
tion. But, in the first place, mere refinement 
of the understanding is not true culture. 

[93] 



Health and Suggestion 

Wherever our century has produced the lat- 
ter, the happiest results have surely been in 
evidence. Wherever, in addition, a prema- 
ture tension of the intellectual life has harmed 
the body, it has brought with it the means of 
healing the wounds inflicted by itself. Do 
not reading, conversation, individual reflec- 
tion, open the sources whose streams renew 
and refresh us? It is not the question here 
of the transformation of a feeble organism. 
That is the function of the imagination and 
of faith. But observe bright, clear-headed 
men and you will not find that they complain 
of ill-humors and constant indispositions as 
do they whose bodily functions, ever present 
in an otherwise empty field of consciousness, 
mar the whole of life. 

If, then, we have refreshed our imagina- 
tion by art, steeled our characters by moral 
aims, enlarged our horizon by culture — if 
we have done these things we will easily con- 
quer the hostile forces which the universe is 
constantly sending out against us. Thus we 

[94] 



•■ 



Health and Suggestion 

perceive, with profound satisfaction, that 
bodily and spiritual activities and efforts of 
every kind unite to fortify and complete our 
happiness; and that life, art and knowledge 
are but beams of the same universal sun. 



[95] 



VI 

TEMPERAMENT AND PASSION 

THESE fragments would be entirely too 
incomplete and too fortuitous in 
method, did we not devote some space 
to a discussion of the temperament and the 
passions of men. A given temperament, to 
be sure, is too often beyond the reach of any 
tempering influence, the passions have been 
discussed both passionately and dispassion- 
ately — and they rule us still. Much, too, 
concerning this side of our subject can be 
inferred from what has been said up to this 
point. Yet, as explicitness is a virtue prized 
by many readers, we may proceed for a 
space. 

Essentially there are but two general types 
of temperament of which all others are but 
[96] 



Health and Suggestion 

modifications or combinations of modifica- 
tions. These are the active and the passive. 
Into these two classes all the innumerable 
links of the human chain are readily grouped. 
As character is the expression of the trained 
will, so temperament is merely the sum of 
native inclinations. A given inclination is 
the crude material on which the will works. 
If successfully, the inclination too will merge 
into the building of character. But if the 
emotional tendency is recalcitrant, it becomes 
passion. Thus temperament is at the root 
of our passions of which, also, there are two 
great classes. Acute psychologists and phy- 
sicians have always recognized this truth and 
have hence, as was said above, distinguished 
temperaments as active or passive, passions 
as exciting or depressing. The sanguine and 
choleric temperaments are active; the mel- 
ancholy and phlegmatic are passive. Nor is 
it true, though- it has often been asserted, that 
the inert temperament has an easy task in 
dealing with the problems of practical life. 

[97] 



Health and Suggestion 

The inertia in nature is powerful; in man 
it is far more difficult to conquer than the 
opposite excess. But this conquest is neces- 
sary, for true wisdom demands a dynamic 
not a static condition of the soul. Indiffer- 
ence is death. It is this vital truth that robs 
of all validity an arid prejudice against the 
passions as such. For the latter are but in- 
tensified inclinations without which there 
would be no living interest in the life of man. 
The ancients fabled the Muses to be the 
daughters of memory: the mother of mem- 
ory is love. An inclination must exist before 
wisdom can temper and direct it. Indiffer- 
ence arises where there is no inclination and 
from it, in turn, proceed boredom and sloth. 
" A man who wounds me," exclaims a lively 
author, " injures my body only, he who bores 
me slays my soul." And what of the man 
who bores himself? Love and hate — these, 
after all, are the foundations of life. It mat- 
ters little that hate is but a hidden love as 
death is but a hidden life. Attraction and 
[98] 



Health and Suggestion 

repulsion are equally necessary expressions of 
a state of complete health. Indignation it- 
self is a living force as necessary to the soul 
as the gall to the body. In a word : the pas- 
sions are powers. You cannot persuade 
yourself into courage, but a degree of indig- 
nation will arm you with it. And no powers 
are to be neglected or eradicated. They are 
to be studied, trained, ordered. Does not 
Lessing even speak of a passion for truth? 
Is not all enthusiasm impassioned? And is 
not enthusiasm the very flame that nourishes 
the life of man? It helps us where cool cal- 
culation is impotent; it develops all unsus- 
pected powers of preservation and healing. 
Persons of ability always desire some move- 
ment in the soul or in the world. Cato the 
elder — so his Greek biographer tells us — 
was happiest when Jove thundered. But 
does not an unimpassioned life, it will be 
asked, save waste of time and energy? May 
not an insect hidden in its chrysalis be pre- 
served alive for years ? Do not plants grow- 

[ 99 ] 



Health and Suggestion 

ing in a cellar possess a longer life than those 
that, in the free sunshine, suck up the mois- 
ture of their mother earth? And what about 
toads living a secular life at the core of some 
stone? A long life, I answer, is not there- 
fore a healthy one, and man is not a toad. 
And if the passions — these intensified in- 
clinations — had no other purpose, yet they 
can fight each other, the good pitted against 
the evil. Reflection alone will never be able 
to deal with any passion. But one passion, 
however violent, can be balanced by another, 
as love by pride, or vice versa, indignation 
by friendship, rage by laughter, etc. Na- 
ture, the wisest of all pedagogues and the 
best, lea.ds man through his inclinations — 
Nature who understands the treatment of her 
children. 

As to the specific passions: *Swift joy ex- 
cites and exhausts; enduring serenity, on the 

* Feuchtersleben does not distinguish passions and 
emotions properly so called with any stringency. The 
fact does not invalidate his argument. — Translator 
[IOO] 






Health and Suggestion 

other hand, nourishes the plastic processes of 
life. The former overstimulates, the latter 
strengthens and heals. Violent rage and 
noble indignation sustain the same relation 
to life and to each other as joy and cheerful- 
ness. The flame of age eats into the struc- 
ture of the organism; the steady fire of in- 
dignation sustains it. And the degree in 
which these passions are present in an indi- 
vidual depends upon character, that is, finally, 
upon the ethical element. Rage is a vulgar 
passion directed to vulgar ends and sinks to 
the level of its object. When we are en- 
raged our enemy has reached his aim, for we 
are in his power. Indignation is a moral 
emotion, a noble passion which lifts us above 
the vulgar, and by rendering the latter con- 
temptible protects us against it. It is this 
voiceless, lofty scorn which, an unconscious 
sign of divinity, plays about the lips of the 
Apollo Belvedere. Plato called the passions 
" fevers of the soul " because they are crises 
during which, as during the fevers of the 

[IOI] 



Health and Suggestion 

body, the soul is healed of long-rooted evils 
by a process of purification. If such benefits 
result from the passions commonly called evil, 
we need scarcely repeat the same arguments 
concerning the good. Only this must be 
added: that of all the emotions hope is the 
most life-giving, and so, for our purpose, the 
most important. 

It must not be thought, however, that we 
can defend the passidns unqualifiedly. The 
good that we have said of them applies to 
them only so long as they do not exceed a 
certain measure, so long (strange as the re- 
mark may seem) as they are active. For the 
passions, exceeding a decent measure, become, 
in our sense, passive. Whatever relates it- 
self to the reasonable side of man's being is 
active, because a truly human activity is pos- 
sible only in the sphere of reason. What- 
ever, on the other hand, succumbs to sensu- 
ality alone is, humanly speaking, passive. 
For a man is then in the grip of crude forces 
which he can no longer rule. Violent rage, 
[ 102] 



Health and Suggestion 

for instance, is not, as one would think, ac- 
tive. It is a demon in whose grasp the ob- 
sessed individual suffers, becoming thus pas- 
sive in his noblest parts. And so all violent 
passions, paradoxical as it may seem, belong 
to the domain of weakness. They are usu- 
ally awakened by some misfortune that 
crushes our primal spiritual strength. The 
boy weeps and rages, the man, earnestly col- 
lecting his powers, works toward the future. 
His passions cheer the horizon of his being; 
move him without exhausting him, and warm 
without consuming his heart. Such passions 
are the insignia of true strength. 

Reflections of this character, were no doubt, 
in the mind of Kant when he made the distinc- 
tion between " strengthening and melting 
emotions." A remark of Saussure's con- 
cerning a " trite melancholy " inspired the 
great philosopher. Saussure, he said to 
himself, tacitly contrasts a trite with an in- 
teresting and noble melancholy. And truly 
there is one that may be reckoned with the 
[ 103] 



Health and Suggestion 

strengthening rather than with the enfeebling 
emotions. That thought goes deep ! The 
pain of a great soul, whether it be for some 
loss sustained, or wrung from it by a con- 
templation of the futility of the eternal cir- 
cling of human life — such pain, such sorrow, 
are not depressing, but elevating and strength- 
ening. It is such suffering pride that alone 
conquers the might of fate. 

But little need be added concerning the 
physical effects of the emotions. It is pos- 
sible for any voluntary effort to equal violent 
emotion in shocking the organism of man. 
Is not that a fact within the experience of 
all? Who does not know the gleaming eye, 
the vigorous pulse, the deep breathing, the 
smooth front of the man inspired by joy? 
Who does not know the trembling, stammer- 
ing, shivering, the rough skin, the beating 
heart, the sunken pulse, the pallor and dis- 
comfort of the coward? Equally familiar 
are the difficult breath, the cold, pale, wrin- 
kled skin, the hesitating step of one who is 
[ 104'] 



*j 



Health and Suggestion 

abandoned by hope. Consider the blush of 
modesty, the pallor of envy, the bright face 
of happy love, the yearning in the eyes of 
unrequited passion. Think of the iron bands 
of jealousy literally throttling us, the torren- 
tial blood in the veins of rage — its red face, 
laboring breath and wild glances! 

Passion knocks in no figurative sense at the 
gate of the heart. Its first result is always 
an interference with the circulation of the 
blood. Hope deferred or utterly lost has 
physical results that no thinking physician 
can fail to consider. Ramadge indeed is 
inclined to assert that such psychical causes 
are often at the root of pulmonary disease. 
And it is likely enough that frequent conges- 
tions in the breast, due to prolonged depres- 
sion, may develop otherwise latent tenden- 
cies of a consumptive character. Remorse, 
the bitterest and most futile of human emo- 
tions, effects the body of man in ways equally 
deleterious. 

The dangers of one's temperament and of 

c 105 ] 



Health and Suggestion 

one's passions are to be counteracted — as 
I have pointed out above — by other pas- 
sions, by reason and, finally, by habit. 

A capacity for the formation of habits is, 
surely, the kindest device that Providence 
uses for the preservation of its creatures. 
It is by the formation of habits that life 
holds its own and turns alien forces to 
its use. To form right habits is the begin- 
ning and the end of ethics as well as of spirit- 
ual healing. 

Reason is never active at moments of emo- 
tional excitement. But the well-trained in- 
tellect prevents the occurrence of such 
moments by subjecting the inclinations and 
passions to the rule of rational habits. Re- 
garded from this point of view, composure 
is not an absence of emotion but a state of 
equilibrium in the emotional life. 

I have indicated how the passions may 

allay each other. They may, however, act 

also as stimuli among themselves. Take a 

given individual and arouse in him a passion 

[106] 



Health and Suggestion 

consonant with his present mood and temper, 
and all the other passions, like the corre- 
sponding strings of a musical instrument, will 
begin to sound and the essential harmony of 
the man's life will sing itself to the spiritual 
ear. For not silence but harmony is the law 
of life ; not indifference but calm. 



[107] 



VII 

THE EMOTIONS 

THE majority of those who have dis- 
cussed the emotions seem to have con- 
ceived them as being in some sense 
outside the order of nature and not subject 
to its laws. They bemoan, deride, admire 
or contemn man: they do not study him. 
But nature, as a matter of fact, is not subject 
to our reproaches: it is always indivisibly 
one, all-inclusive and governed by changeless 
law. Hate, rage and envy, therefore, have 
their place in the eternal economy of things. 
Definite causes have given rise to them, and 
they have definite qualities as worthy of con- 
templation as many other things the study 
of which fascinates us. 

When an inner or outer change occurs of 
[108] 



■H 



Health and Suggestion 

which we are the true cause, i. e. which fol- 
lows necessarily from the nature of our be- 
ing — we may be said to act. When a given 
change, on the other hand, is only partly due 
to our own natures — we suffer. And every 
emotion affects our body in such a manner 
that our power of action is either increased 
or diminished. When, therefore, an emo- 
tion arises immediately within us, it expresses 
itself in action ; otherwise its result is passion. 
Alternately, then, our spirit acts and suffers. 
When wholly itself, i. e. when guided by clear 
conceptions, it acts; erring, it suffers. It fol- 
lows that the more our spirit be subject to 
error, the more keenly will it suffer. But 
a soul trained to the contemplation of truth 
will enjoy a high degree of activity. 

Joy is the emotion that raises the soul to 
a higher degree of perfection; sadness, on 
the contrary, robs it of its power to act. 
Love is nothing but joy accompanied by the 
representation of an external object, hate is 
sorrow conditioned in the same manner. 
[ 109] 



Health and Suggestion 

The similarity of an object to one that has 
been the cause of joy or sorrow to us will 
awaken in us those undefined emotions of 
love or hate which we call sympathy or 
antipathy. 

The powerlessness of man to check or 
govern his emotions I deem true servitude. 
In such cases the spirit has abandoned its 
rights to external influences. It approves 
good and follows evil. And since spirit and 
body are so intimately at one, the latter too 
is delivered into the power of external nature 
of which it is a part. I attune my spirit to 
joy for this reason, that tears and terror are 
the signs of a weak soul and hence hindrances 
to both virtue and health. In proportion to 
its health will the human frame enable the 
spirit to develop and to increase its power. 

To act reasonably means simply to act ac- 
cording to the necessities of our nature when 
properly understood. But it is the essential 
nature of every being to preserve its existence. 
A truly free human being thinks of nothing 
[no] 



" 



Health and Suggestion 

so little as of death. His wisdom consists not 

in the contemplation oi death, but in that 
of life. For a free spirit is one who lives 
reasonably, not ruled by fear, but striving 
by ever new activities to preserve its being. 
It seeks to know the essential nature of 
things, and by such true knowledge to rob 
all hindrances to joy and action of their 
power. Hence this studv or the emotions. 

All our efrorts and instincts derive from 
nature, either immediately, or mediately in 
the sense in which we ourselves are part of 
the natural order of things. These instincts 
that result immediately from our own being 
are related to the spirit in so far as the lat- 
ter lives by the light of clear ideas : other 
instincts are related to the spirit only in pro- 
portion to its own turbidness. The power of 
these is not truly human at all, for they are 
utterly dependent upon the external. Hence 
the former class of instincts gives rise to ac- 
tivities, the latter to passions. The former 
are ever good, the latter of a mixed nature, 
[in] 



Health and Suggestion 

good and evil. Hence in the actual prac- 
tice of life it is our first duty to cultivate the 
reason. Thus and thus only can man's true 
happiness be brought to pass. And his true 
happiness is but that peace of the soul which 
comes from the contemplation of God. But 
again, the cultivation of the reason consists 
in a recognition of God in the laws of nature. 
It must be man's highest aim, then, to fortify 
those emotions which conduce to a knowledge 
of the true nature of things, and to let them 
curb and govern their more lawless brethren. 
An emotion which has grown to be a pas- 
sion ceases to be such so soon as we attain 
to a clear conception of its nature. For at 
the root of passion is a turbid thought. And 
fortunately there is no emotion of which we 
cannot gain a clear conception. By gaining 
a clear conception of anything I mean such a 
conception as connects the individual phenom- 
enon with the economy of the universe, and 
judges it according to the laws of eternal 
justice. Such reflection is instructive in two 

[112] 



Health and S u g g e s t i o n 

ways. It teaches us first that man can dimin- 
ish the suffering that is emotional in its origin, 
and, further, that the action and passion of 
man have but a single source. For instance : 
Mortal man is so constituted that each one 

arcs all others to live in conformity to his 
own notion of right and harmonious living. 
In an unreasonable man this desire, when 
thwarted, degenerates into suffering. But in 
the reasonable man's soul this desire grows 
into active virtue. So all desires, so long as 
they spring from imperfect knowledge, are 
passions; rightly looked upon, rooted in 
clear cognition, they blossom into actions. 

To comprehend the emotions is, then, the 
most efficient method of keeping them in 
bounds. At least no other method seems to 
be within the limits of our power. For the 
forming of clear conceptions is the single 
source of the powers of the human soul. 

As the reason succeeds in ordering all 
things under the conception of their neccssi 
our passions are mastered and our sufferings 

[113] 



Health and Suggestion 

decreased. Each phenomenon of life, illu- 
minated by this insight, heightens our energy. 
Experience confirms this truth amply. Our 
sorrow over any loss decreases with a 
recognition of the loss's inevitableness. No 
one pities an infant because it cannot speak 
or walk and is not conscious of itself. But 
if the majority of men came into this world 
with all faculties mature, and only occasion- 
ally in an infantile condition, then infancy, 
being no longer looked upon as necessary and 
inevitable, would be considered pitiable, be- 
cause exceptional, and not necessitated by a 
changeless law. 

If we cannot, at all times, rise to a clear 
cognition of the nature of our inclinations, 
we may yet arrive at right action by assum- 
ing certain truths dogmatically, absorbing 
them as far as possible, and adapting them 
to the varying circumstances of life. Among 
such truths is this : that hate can be mastered 
by love. If we dwell upon this truth, if 
we consider the blessedness of love and the 
[ii4] 



Health and Suggestion 

inevitable impulses of human action, the evil 
that men do and that incites our anger will 
play but a small part in our imagination. 
This warning, however^ must be sounded: 
that in the ordering of our thoughts we give 
prominence to the element of good in each 
thing considered; for only so is that feeling 
of joy born that leads to action. If the de- 
sire of fame incite you, consider what is noble 
and genuine in what you desire, and how 
true fame may become your portion; do not 
think of fame's misuse or its transitoriness. 
Such thoughts torture him whose hopes are 
wrecked and who thinks to seem wise when 
he is but venting his bitterness. Those de- 
sire fame most ardently who are forever pro- 
claiming its futility. Thus the impoverished 
miser is never tired of babbling of the mis- 
use of wealth and the vices of the rich; the 
rejected lover bewails the inconstancy of the 
female sex. Both succeed only in increasing 
their misery and in showing that they can 
neither bear it in a manly spirit nor refrain 

[us] 



Health and Suggestion 

from looking upon others' happier fortunes 
with a jaundiced eye. 

One emotion can only be conquered by an- 
other and stronger one. And those active 
emotions are the stronger that are related to 
the spirit of man. And the more inclusive 
the activity of the spirit is, the more potent 
to concentrate all life upon a single end, the 
stronger will be the emotions which it rules. 

Now the spirit of man may reach a point 
at which the forms of all phenomenal appear- 
ances are merged in the idea of God. At 
that point there arises in the heart the love 
of God, the purest, best and strongest of all 
emotions. In it all others fade. Lay hold 
upon this feeling and you will walk actively 
in a clear light, having conquered all pas- 
sions and all extreme desires. 

But this emotion, like every other active 
one, is rooted in knowledge. For as we learn 
to know the nature of many things we ap- 
proach gradually to a knowledge of the high- 
est. From this knowledge flows the deepest 

[H6] 



Health and Suggestion 

happiness of the soul. And as love is but 
joy or happiness accompanied by an imagina- 
tive representation of its cause, it follows 
that this joy springing from a knowledge of 
the universe, will lead us to that love of God 
which conquers all things, being itself uncon- 
querable. 

Our happiness, our liberty, our health, all 
our mortal weal rest finally upon the change- 
less and unchanging love of God. To be 
sure, the majority of men think differently. 
Obedience to their lusts they esteem freedom 
and hold themselves enslaved when yielding 
to eternal laws. They do not realize that 
blessedness is not the reward of love, but love 
itself. We gain blessedness not by curbing 
our passions; we curb them because we are 
blessed. 

And so I have come to the end of all I 
desired to say of the mastery of passion and 
the freedom of the spirit. It is clear how 
much more powerful the wise man is than the 
fool. The latter is driven around the circle 
[H7J 



Health and Suggestion 

of external things, attains no inner satisfac- 
tion, reaches no consciousness of himself, of 
the world or God, and ceases to be when he 
ceases to suffer. No storm can sway the wise 
man's soul. Conscious of the eternal necessi- 
ties of things and of God, he can never cease 
to be or to act. The road which I have here 
mapped out may seem a hard one, yet is it to 
be found. It must be hard, for how else 
should it have been found and followed by 
so few? But all things lofty are as difficult 
as they are rare. 



[118] 



VIII 

THE LAW OF CONTRAST 

THE life of man, like the whole of 
nature, is subject to laws that follow, 
accompany and condition each other. 
There is a law of equilibrium in the universe 
in which all contradictories merge — an eter- 
nal pulse-beat of nature which propels life 
through the veins of the world. Even in the 
growth of plants, these tender children of 
peace and silence, nature, still true to this 
law, hides a profound contradiction. For 
plants grow by the systematic development 
of one knot or center of force after another. 
A concentration of power takes place at each 
of these knots, only to spread out again and 
shoot forth in the processes of plant forma- 
tion. This method is typical of nature's 

[119] 



Health and Suggestion 

working. In the whole of creation there is 
no advantage without a corresponding lack, 
no gain without loss, no rise without a fall, 
no contradiction that does not somehow end 
in reconciliation. So in the little world of 
man's life there is a constant interchange of 
tension and slackness, sleep and awakening, 
joy and sorrow, like the systole and diastole 
of our living breath. Our lives move in a 
circle conditioned by such oscillations. Ac- 
tion and reaction in this system are propor- 
tionate to each other's strength. 

A naturalist offers the following remarks 
pertinent to the subject. 

" He who walks too fast must soon slacken 
his pace. He who moves about too much 
must soon seek proportionate rest. He who 
exhausts in one day the emotions and activi- 
ties of two, will soon be forced to a day of 
inactivity and dullness. The more violent 
the excitement of our waking hours, the 
deeper will be our sleep. Equally a sensation 
will fade rapidly in proportion to its vio- 
[120] 



Health and Suggestion 

lence, and the impetuousness of a desire is 
the measure of its briefness. The extreme 
point of rage is usually its end. And thus 
too the freest and most self-sufficing soul will 
be capable of the profoundest self-abnega- 
tion in the service of the good of man." 

If these living contrasts follow each other 
swiftly and violently, it is plain that the vital 
forces must soon be exhausted. If, on the 
other hand, life inclines too steadily in one 
direction, the contrast, which is also its condi- 
tion, is lost. Hence it must be our aim to 
learn to treat wisely and balance duly these 
contrasts in our lives. Happy that man who, 
at the brink of dissolution, can summon the 
old vitalizing battle to his soul! Equally 
happy he in whom the battle, raging too 
strongly, can be silenced by voluntary repose. 
Thus it is possible to oppose the varying 
elements of life to each other and regulate 
contradictory tendencies among themselves. 
And this is the fundamental law of the soul's 
healing. But no one can fulfill or even 

[121] 



Health and Suggestion 

learn to understand this law who has not first 
learned to know and to rule himself. It is 
not enough to be wary of meat and drink, 
to alternate in proper order and proportion 
rest and action, or even to read my reflections 
on the influence of feeling, willing or think- 
ing upon man's health. You must do vio- 
lence to yourself, if necessary; know your- 
self, train yourself, morally and intellectually. 
Then and then only will you recognize the 
meaning of that integrity of the individual's 
nature which is health. Nor let any one 
affirm that strength for such an effort is not 
given him. The spirit is mighty: its com- 
mand will create the power to obey. 

The necessity for joy and recreation after 
periods of earnest activity or suffering need 
not be insisted upon. It makes itself duly 
felt, even as the kindliness of nature com- 
pels the weary body to gently irresistible 
sleep. Only the scholar, restlessly delving 
in the mines of knowledge, needs a warning 
not to transgress this law of nature. If 

[ 122] 



Health and Suggestion 

Mephistopheles had rendered Faust no serv- 
ice but a temporary release from brooding 
activities, Goethe's hero need never have 
despaired. 

Thus it is with sleep. With awakening 
it is very different. Here the strong hand 
of compulsion is often present. Life points 
out each man's way with its iron wand. Well 
for him who seeks it at once and follows its 
wise direction before fate applies it to his 
writhing back. For it takes a high grade 
of inner and spiritual culture to remember 
the necessity for seriousness, even for pain, 
in the ecstasy of sensuous delight. " What 
is that mysterious power? " asks the French 
poet Salvandy, " which causes some affliction 
to arise from our most vivid joys, as if man, 
in tasting them, were faithless to his des- 
tiny?" The truth that a sensitive soul has 
here perceived in the moral world extends 
itself to the physical. Pain is not only the 
seasoning of pleasure but its very condition. 
Thus night must have existed first or there 
[123] 



Health and Suggestion 

could have been no day. Nature knows its 
task, and never gives a loveless gift. It has 
added thorns to the rose and he who would 
rob life of every sting would also rob it of 
every joy. A little accidental annoyance will 
often free us from an hitherto incurable 
melancholy. Rich, satisfied and idle person^ 
are the usual victims of hypochondria. Some 
inner warning compels them to constant self- 
torture, for there is the profound gap in their 
lives which pleasure cannot fill. The wise 
man prevents such painful feelings and seeks 
even the inevitable shadow upon the garish 
road of life. Twilight broods over the nor- 
mal fate of man. In the glaring light of 
happiness as in the darkness of misfortune 
lurk equal temptations. And he who has 
known both will listen gladly, in the midst 
of joy and light, to the still small voice of 
sorrow. In the capacity to do that the art 
of life culminates and the healing of the soul 
is perfected. 

Upon the first appearance of this little 
[ 1 24 ] 



Health and Suggestion 

book it was the above paragraph that aroused 
the antagonism even of those who were in 
agreement with my general argument. 
" What makes the thought of Southern 
countries so immensely attractive," asked a 
brilliant woman, " but that they present the 
fair image of an eternal Spring? And do we 
not conceive of a better life under some such 
symbol of lasting serenity? Is there not an 
element of monkish asceticism in a view that 
makes pain an essential of human life? 
Nay! We are here in order to be happy, 
and our aim should be to make beauty and 
goodness prevail over the earth." 

How gladly would I agree to this conten- 
tion of a beautiful soul. Who would not 
desire to share its dreams? But, alas, we 
must work out our salvation in the world as 
it is. If, for a space, we forget that fair 
dream, it is but that it might return the sooner 
and remain the truer for us. For man's 
longing is given him that he may approach 
the height of the ideal, not that the ideal 
[125] 



Health and Suggestion 

should be brought to the level of life's reality. 
Our dreams are to guide our efforts, not be 
realized and thus cease to be as stars above 
us. All this the clear-seeing Greeks beauti- 
fully symbolized in the myth of Zeus and 
Semele. The highest ceases to be the highest 
if it be dragged down by a too constant use. 
Reflect upon our destiny with true thought, 
not with idle wishes, and you will be recon- 
ciled. You will leave the gorgeous heaven 
of the oriental imagination to those who are 
content to paint without the use of shadow. 
If more perfect worlds await us, a more per- 
fect or, at least, a different organization will 
fit us for them. In this world pleasure is 
conditioned upon pain which is at the root 
of life and its activity. And who, after all, 
will work best toward an amelioration of our 
earthly lot — he whose heart is full of futile 
dreams, or he who is conscious of the reality 
of things as they are ? Who — to put the 
matter on a lower plane — will enjoy life 
most? He, surely, who takes the world 
[126] 



Health and Suggestion 

as he finds it and reconciles himself to it. 

Life is activity. Joy is the emotion that ac- 
companies this activity when it is unhindered. 
But hindrances must exist and must have 
existed in order that joy may be. And that 
is only repeating our former argument con- 
cerning the necessity of pain. Pain, in a 
word, is the necessary spur without which 
life, as it is now constituted, could not go 
on. 

Nor is this view a melancholy one. It is 
in conformity to our true condition and illu- 
minates our destiny. The blending of joy 
and pain in our mortal lot is a symbol of 
the divine intention. Without suffering char- 
acter cannot be shaped, nor, on the other 
hand, can the spirit be cultivated without 
pleasure. Not comfort but duty is the end 
of man. The flat monotony of indulgence 
ends in a satiety that teaches us the blessed- 
ness of labor, and our own heaven-storming 
desires urge only the mind of folly to despair; 
they attune a wise man to temperateness. 
[ 127] 



Health and Suggestion 

The whole life of man would be, but for the 
spur of pain, a blank page upon which he 
should write the noble if difficult record that 
he has suffered, that is, that he has lived! 
And the writing of this record is man's true 
happiness. We, at least, can have no con- 
ception of happiness but this. Youth, full 
of its illusions, can scarcely rise to this reflec- 
tion. To the mature man who has suffered 
disappointments it is an old story. If it 
seems to rob life of value, surely it compen- 
sates by giving our earthly struggle a higher 
significance. Happiness is uncertain and 
transitory; duty is assured and eternal. Pain 
exists but to bring forth its own consolation. 
And this very contradiction in our life is the 
seal of its high destiny. No smile is so 
beautiful as one that struggles through tears, 
no yearning loftier and more lasting than one 
that can never be satisfied. He who re- 
nounces, truly enjoys. The cross, wound 
with roses, will still be the symbol of our life. 
The contradictory element in our lives is 

[128] 



Health and Suggestion 

now established by an effort of thought. It 
remains to seek it and its effects in the prac- 
tical business of existence and to inquire how, 
in each instance, the necessary equilibrium 
may be established. Joy and sorrow are ex- 
pressions of man's most sensitive side, namely, 
the emotional. But rest and work follow 
the same law of alternation. Activity is the 
condition of man's life. But an activity ex- 
cessive in duration or intensity may neverthe- 
less jeopardize the harmony of our being. 
Nor is the same rule inapplicable to the physi- 
cal organism. The alternation between nour- 
ishment and the expenditure of energy is to 
be regulated by temperance. A steady 
oscillation is equally necessary in the highest 
regions of human thought. And so the 
subtlest thinkers, who have tried to project 
their minds even beyond the limits of reason- 
ing, have finally concluded that the weal of 
man rests upon an alternation of consciousness 
and unconsciousness. 

It would, of course, be mere pedantry to 

[ 129] 



Health and Suggestion 

attempt to force a necessary spiritual and 
physical equilibrium upon ourselves and to 
attempt to regulate man as though he were 
a watch. By no conscious act is conscious- 
ness to be escaped. Only a mood may be 
voluntarily summoned. Most favorable to 
health and happiness is the acquisition of a 
thoughtful and comforting attitude toward 
life. Such a state, half-voluntary, will pre- 
serve the golden mean between too intense an 
absorption and its contrary. It will deflect 
attention from ourselves and healthily blend 
our activities with those of the universe. 
This condition can only be attained by a cul- 
tivated soul; it cannot even be wholly ex- 
pressed, possessing, like all the conditions of 
man, a mystical, inexplicable residuum. 

On this subject Schelver has some preg- 
nant reflections. "Let each man consult his 
own experience as to when he has been most 
blessed. Surely in his activity, in a state not 
of being but of a constant becoming. He is 
then lost in the happiness of life, and his 
[130] 



Health and Suggestion 

works, originating in no artifice or conscious 
intention, blossom from his soul like leaves 
and fruits from the tough fibers of wood. 
And indeed we know that he who seeks too 
eagerly to grasp and hold the objects of his 
desire will lose them in the moment of his 
illusory success. He errs in trying to grasp 
what he should receive. For all things are, 
and it only remains for them to be for him. 
Let him quietly receive and the gates of life 
will be open unto him. For this reason mem- 
ory and with it true comfort return to the 
heart when age has dulled the edge of im- 
moderate desire. From the conflict between 
desire and dissatisfaction man returns to the 
holy instinct of life itself." 

Here, then, is an aim for the art of life 
and for the soul's healing — to be ever clear- 
sighted concerning oneself, but to avoid a 
scrutiny too meticulous; to be able to regard 
serenely and objectively all the phenomena 
of being, within and without; to receive all 
influences, assimilate them, and yet to remain, 

[131] 



Health and Suggestion 

amid all the shifting flux of things, oneself! 
He who achieves this aim can be his own 
teacher, friend, adversary, protector, physi- 
cian. All life is rhythmic, having its beat and 
fall. As our very gait consists in a continual 
falling forward, so all rounded progress rests 
upon a harmony of alternating contradic- 
tories. This harmony differs for each indi- 
vidual. It is not to be found by reflection, 
but by practice in the battle of life. It is 
achieved when man is conscious of no organ 
of his body and no activity of his soul as a 
separate organ or a separate activity, but 
feels the functioning of the former and the 
projection of the latter to be merged in the 
general expression of himself. To be con- 
scious of an organ is a sign that the organ 
is awry; to be conscious of none — that is 
health. 



[132] 



IX 

HYPOCHONDRIA 

THE healing power of the soul is di- 
rectly applicable to the saddest and 
most foolish of human infirmities, 
hypochondria. Reason, morality, humor, 
and even religion have attempted, in their 
various ways, to combat this demon. But 
of late he has taken to affecting cleverness, 
and no one who pretends to subtlety or dis- 
tinction will repel him. To call him egotism 
is but a vain attack, for egotism is no^v 
thought to be the infallible sign of thought- 
fulness and liberality. Let us attempt to 
show that this monster is a mere nothing, and 
our attempt will be more effective. 

When Wieland died, a venerable voice, 
speaking at his bier, said: " When man be- 
[ 133] 



Health and Suggestion 

gins to examine his physical or moral being, 
he usually finds himself to be ill. We are 
all afflicted with a disease called life." There 
was a true definition of hypochondria, of that 
species, at least, against which the healing of 
the soul can prevail. There is another kind 
which the physician must treat. Of the for- 
mer, however, it is not enough to say that it 
is an imaginary disease. There is a suffi- 
cient reality at the basis of it. All of us 
mortals are only relatively healthy. Each 
has prescribed for him the way by which he 
must, at last, go down to death. And he 
needs but to scrutinize himself too closely or 
with imperfect knowledge to recognize this 
way and — to travel it faster than was nec- 
essary. So long as we are well enough to do 
our day's work and to enjoy the rest that fol- 
lows it, so long, I say, it is our duty as citi- 
zens and men, to take no further thought of 
our body. Pain is presumptuous. Recog- 
nize it and it will grow apace. But many 
[134] 



Health and Suggestion 

men pet pain and cosset it until it grows un- 
wieldy and threatens to destroy them. Pain 
is great only in proportion to our littleness. 
Imagine a Themistocles or a Romulus gap- 
ing at his tongue before a mirror or feeling 
his pulse ! I go farther and assert that fear, 
which is the source of this evil, may be used 
as a curative motive. For does fear heal? 
Does anything so precipitate the coming of 
old age as the fear of it? An ancient Per- 
sian speaks of five ways by which life is com- 
monly shortened: Want in old age, long 
disease, immoderate wandering, the constant 
thought of death, and — fear. Is it not 
true that the hypochondriac dies daily of his 
fears? He is the type of those wretched 
creatures who are ever calling upon a physi- 
cian, who read deeply and morbidly in medi- 
cal lore, who seek for infirmities in their 
bodies and who, as has been well pointed 
out, are as likely to die of a printer's error 
in a medical book as of anything else. These 
[135] 



Health and Suggestion 

are the human ciphers whom Plato banished 
from his Republic and whose diagnosis he 
gives so perfectly. 

" Is it not shameful/' asks Socrates, " to 
run to a physician not because an inevitable 
disease has attacked us, but because idleness 
and luxury have induced conditions in us for 
which the descendants of iEsculapius are at 
pains to invent names? If a carpenter be ill, 
he has a physician cure him, whether it be 
by some purgative or an incision or a cauter- 
ization. But if the physician were to give 
him a long diet-list and recommend a hun- 
dred little precautions, the man would at once 
say that he has no time to be sick and that it 
would profit him little to be ever concerned 
over his condition and abandon the business 
by which he earns his bread. He would dis- 
miss the physician and, returning to his 
wonted manner of life, continue to be healthy, 
to live and to work. But if his vital energy 
be too weak to admit of this process, he will 
take leave of life upon terms so pitiful. Thus 

[136] 



Health and Suggestion 

would the plain man act. Shall he whose 
calling lies on a higher plane think more 
meanly? By Zeus, there's nothing in the 
world so hinders us in making a proper de- 
mand upon life as an exaggerated anxiety 
over our bodies. Such an anxiety makes 
hard the conducting of domestic affairs, de- 
stroys the strength of the warrior and pre- 
vents the citizen from fulfilling his duties to 
the state. It is the death of art and science 
and, dreaming ever of imaginary ills, ren- 
ders comprehension and reflection impossible. 
Wherever it be, it prevents man from all 
proofs of virtue. iEsculapius healed the 
wounds of heroes. It is nowhere reported 
that, by long devices, he sought to extend the 
miserable existence of valetudinarians and 
thus permit them to beget a posterity as 
weakly and as wretched as themselves. A 
man congenitally weak and ruined by intem- 
perance he deemed worthy of life neither for 
his own sake nor for that of his fellow-citi- 
zens, nor did he think his art given him for 
[ 137] 



Health and Suggestion 

the sake of such an one though he were rich 
as Midas." 

If this point of view seem to us not only 
antique but antiquated there is yet enough 
truth in it to make it worth our consideration. 
Intelligent men have always -considered that 
species of hypochondria of which I am speak- 
ing as a mere nothing. One of the most intel- 
lectual of these — himself a victim — 
namely, Kant, proceeds like a true German 
philosopher, and annihilates the obstacle in his 
path. He asserts all men who insist upon 
the reality of hypochondria to be unreason- 
ing. " If morbid fears attack him he seeks 
their cause. If he find none or find that the 
cause, though real, is beyond the reach of 
his activity, he turns boldly to the necessary 
business of life. He lets the anxiety lie by 
as though it did not concern him and pro- 
ceeds to those matters that constitute his 
duty." This determination has our complete 
approval. And we know that Kant succeeded 
in carrying it out. For the sage of Koenigs- 

[138] 



Health and Suggestion 

berg, in spite of the hypochondria that was 
really caused by flat-chestedness, attained an 
unusual age. " There are grave diseases," 
says Lichtenberg, " of which it is possible to 
die. There are others, not so fatal, that may 
nevertheless be discerned without particular 
study. Finally there are those that cannot 
be seen without a microscope through which, 
however, they look horrible enough. And 
the microscope is hypochondria. If a man 
cares to use that instrument he will find him- 
self ill daily. Of especial frequency is the 
hypochondriacal existence of an imaginary 
consumption. This notion is fed by the fool- 
ish symptoms dwelt upon by romancers. The 
consumptive coughs, to be sure ; but not every 
one who coughs is consumptive. Similarly 
are other symptoms to be regarded. In a 
word, the diagnosis of a complex condition 
should be left to the physician and to him 
alone." 

As the hypochondria which we are here dis- 
cussing is not even a disease, it may be ne- 
[ 139] 



Health and Suggestion 

gated and hence expelled by the attack of a 
real distemper. Make the hypochondriac ill; 
let him see, for a space, what real illness is, 
and he will be cured. And, finally, whether 
this wretched state be weakness, imagination, 
sloth, dullness, egoism, disease or incipient 
insanity, there is still one angel whose flam- 
ing sword will keep it from the Paradise of 
man's life, and that angel is activity. For 
this reason the hypochondriac deserves no 
sympathy. I see no reason why a social 
stigma should not be attached to this wretched 
mania, and its willful victim be excluded from 
the ranks of the polite. Such a method 
would be more effective than any philosophi- 
cal panaceas. If society has ever the right 
to attack the individual, this is an occasion 
on which that right may be exercised. For 
the hypochondriac will soon be cured if he is 
hard put to it to live at all. 

Where, however, the soul has applied those 
healing powers which we have attributed to it 
in this treatise, hypochondria cannot exist. 
[ 140] 



Health and Suggestion 

I should like to see the man, who, surrounded 
by fair imaginings, directing his path by the 
might of a trained will, serenely regarding 
the great world, and cultivating all his pow- 
ers harmoniously — I should like to see a 
man of such a temper attacked by hypochon- 
dria. To elaborate that statement would be 
merely to repeat myself. But the phenom- 
enon of hypochondria itself had to be treated 
here. For the ailment is symptomatic of our 
age. 

There are three especial predispositions to 
hypochondria that concern the physician of 
the soul, not the apothecary. These three 
are : egoism, idleness, pedantry. Of the first 
two we have spoken at sufficient length. The 
third should be noted, the more so, as in life 
qualities are often misinterpreted as pedantry 
that have nothing in common with it. Not 
orderliness and punctuality, qualities hardly 
conceivable in a state of excess, constitute 
pedantry. It is the spirit of littleness that 
forgets the end in the means and falls a slave 
[141] 



Health and Suggestion 

to conventional idols that deserve the name. 
Not the quiet scholar who in the better com- 
pany of books neglects the noisy world, not 
he is the pedant, but rather that scholar who, 
in the world of books, forgets the world of 
the spirit, to whom the letter, ceasing to be 
a symbol, becomes a reality. Such an one 
is concerned over the editions of Aristotle 
and careless of the Stagirite's thoughts; he 
is interested in the records of the past, but 
unconscious of the life they express or the 
purpose which they served. Finally there is 
the pedant who would be the last man to 
think himself one, namely, the gilded fop of 
the drawing-room who has raised the social 
observances that are mere means to pleasant 
human intercourse into a serious end. 
Thus he esteems the trivial as serious, and 
the truly serious issues of life as trivial. And 
these forms of pedantry are analogous to the 
one with which I am here especially con- 
cerned. What is more symptomatic of lit- 
tleness of mind, that is, of pedantry, than to 
[ 142 ] 



Health and Suggestion 

forget the true aims of life in a constant con- 
cern over the minor ailments to which our 
flesh is heir. This hypochondria is a kind 
of vanity of health. It leads, in the end, to 
spiritual death in proportion as it seeks, with 
childish anxiety, to escape the death of the 
body. And this hypochondria is full of self- 
satisfaction and has even in our days em- 
bodied its ideals in an idol which we must ex- 
amine more closely. 

The melancholy of famous men has often 
been remarked. The saying of Aristotle 
that lofty and thoughtful souls are inclined 
to sadness needs little proof. Camoens, 
Tasso, Young and Byron appear before us 
clothed in an atmosphere of ideal gloom. 
But there is a distinction among these. For 
the sadness of the first two edifies us, but that 
of the others we affect to share. I cannot 
fittingly pursue the immediate subject. Great 
men may embody their feelings in verse as 
they choose. But of modern poetry as a 
whole we may boldly declare that it is not 

[143] 



Health and Suggestion 

an affair of great men and great sorrows, but 
of sickly conditions. Wretched, banal, un- 
spiritual hypochondria is the nurse of modern 
letters, and the appreciation of a young poet 
will soon need the physician rather than the 
reviewer. A young fellow, spoiled rather 
than trained in the parental home, without 
experience, knowledge or purpose, void of all 
power to work or to enjoy, becomes conscious 
of his contemptible lack of certainty and 
healthy development. He reads novels, runs 
to the theater and writes verses. On a sud- 
den he perceives that his moral vacillation 
and intellectual boredom are really an aching 
void and an ideal yearning. He plunges his 
hand into the sea of melancholy phrases with 
which the poetic streams of the last decenia 
have well-nigh overwhelmed us. He bathes 
in these waters and mirrors himself in them. 
Camoens and Byron are his fellow-sufferers. 
But since the hour of modernity has advanced 
his sorrow strikes him as more interesting 
than theirs and he looks forward toward its 
[ H4] 



Health and Suggestion 

passing into a second edition. Thus the poor 
wretch wears out his puling youth. When 
the stern hand of life is really at his throat — 
his helpless misery is complete. Knowing 
neither himself nor the world, he grasps 
vainly at his poetic images which can help 
him no longer, and he and his tawdry glories 
seek a common grave. 

Such is the fate of the untalented. But 
the true poet himself may similarly wreck his 
soul. For he loses himself even more thor- 
oughly in the abysses of ego-mania, mistakes 
hypochondriacal moon-gazing for poetic cre- 
ation and at last suffers that frightful cleav- 
age of his inner life to which the tyro can 
only pretend. But such poets attract their 
publics and since everyone is a member of 
the reading public nowadays, it seemed nec- 
essary not to neglect these phenomena here. 
We must protest against the pseudo-Youngs 
and pseudo-Byrons, for we must cleave to life. 
We need courage, not despair. Literature 
of a different order we have ourselves- dwelt 

[145] 



Health and Suggestion 

upon as among the most effective means by 
which the soul may achieve its healing ends. 
But in addition to art and to activity, which 
is the alpha and omega of our method, there 
are still two things — to be mentioned in our 
next chapter — which are of more import to 
the hypochondriac than anything that ever 
was written in any book. 



C 146 ] 



X 

TRUTH AND NATURE 

THE first curatives as well as preventa- 
tives of all human ills are truth and 
nature. An utterly pure and free ex- 
istence we cannot lead. We are forced into 
the inevitable conventions of social inter- 
course. Here is a restraint which we can- 
not avoid and which, as a rule, we are forced 
to esteem. But to add the coercion of an- 
other untruth, another convention, and, above 
all, from within — this would be folly de- 
servedly punished by destruction. There is 
but one morality and that is truth, but one 
sin and that is untruth. The former means 
life and health, the latter means decay. Like 
a secret poison do social pretense and un- 
truth gnaw at our vitals, but we have ceased 

[147] 



Health and S u g g e s t i o n 

to be conscious of their destructive power. 
Never was this evil greater than to-day. So- 
phistication of every kind has entrapped us 
into constant untruth of which we are as 
proud as city-women of their pallid cheeks. 
Even so the incurable invalid rejoices at the 
cessation of pain. Hope illuminates his face 
with a smile that strikes his physician as a 
bitter and pitiful irony. That is a symbol of 
our world. No one has the courage to be 
himself. And yet health is nothing but the 
opposing of our true and strong and sincere 
selves to the hostile forces of the world. The 
thinker is not unconscious of this evil. " Be 
true to yourself! " he calls out to a conven- 
tionalized generation. " Your salvation lies 
in truth ! " And this warning should be ad- 
dressed to every individual. To play a part 
throughout the course of one's life, even if 
it be played so gracefully that we may echo 
the plaudit e of the Emperor Augustus — 
even so it must wrench and exhaust the vital 
forces before their time. And why should 

[i 4 8] 



Health and Suggestion 

we play a part? Is it not easy to be sincere? 
Does it take any exertion to show ourselves 
as we really are? To men I would say: 
there is no strength without truth; and to 
women: without truth there is no charm. 
And genius is, in the last analysis, the power 
to be true. The original writer is he who, 
without consulting books, sets down what he 
has truly found in his innermost self. He 
produces work which strikes the most erudite 
with astonishment. His words have a fresh- 
ness and immediacy which every poet envies 
him. We would, therefore, be better artists 
if we were truer men. Our miseries and in- 
competencies grow from our falseness. Let 
us take courage to deceive neither others nor 
ourselves. To have the source of all bless- 
edness within oneself, could there be a hap- 
pier fortune? Ourselves are the sources of 
truth, of imagination and of the pure will. 

And what can save us from the falsity that 
surrounds us on all sides? A deep joy in 
nature. The study of nature produces an at- 
[ H9] 



Health and Suggestion 

omosphere in which our deepest and subtlest 
selves can be born and developed. If the 
tender plant which is our spirit shrivels and 
seres in the hot-house of society, transplant 
it to an austere wilderness and it will revive. 
Even the Epicurean who has tasted every joy 
must finally confess that those joys are the 
highest which do not trouble the peace of the 
soul. And these joys are two: the contem- 
plation of the soul and the contemplation of 
nature. Nor is there any fact of loftier and 
deeper significance than this: that when the 
greatness and loveliness of nature refresh the 
senses, the spirit is elevated and enlarged. 
You may say what you please in favor of so- 
ciety. Assuredly it teaches man his duty and 
there is nothing higher than that. But only 
solitude will give him content. The eye that 
gazes upon the immeasurable blue of the 
heaven or contemplates the glories of the 
manicolored earth, loses sight of the mean 
anxieties that harass man in the market-place. 
The thoughts of nature are all lofty, and 

[150] 



Health and Suggestion 

man's contemplations may become like them. 
The ego becomes aware of its own littleness 
and yet, with thoughts fixed on infinity, finds 
its happiness in the eternal harmony of things. 
It learns justice of nature's changeless laws — 
nature which loves even when it destroys, in 
which alone are truth, repose and health. All 
sane spirits who have given man the fruits of 
a pregnant solitude, have flourished amid 
such feelings and will ever think of nature 
with a deep reverence. That Lessing had 
no feeling for nature is a myth that grew out 
of a foolish paradox. It is among natural- 
ists that you will find those scholars who at- 
tain a great and serene old age. As the inti- 
mate study of nature, if it is to prove fruitful, 
necessitates a certain childlikeness of attitude 
(such as we find in Howard and Novalis) — 
even so it creates this quality in those who 
pursue it and gives them the boon of a second 
youth. 

Every effort of the spirit is, in a sense, but 
the study of nature. And he who has the 

[151] 



Health and Suggestion 

power and the insight to treat all things from 
this point of view will keep his spirit sane 
and happy. Like the faithful rotation of 
day and night will his inner life move in the 
circle of law and he will at last and blessedly 
comprehend that his feeling for the harmony 
of the universe is that harmony itself, of 
which the mind that thinks it is, of course, it- 
self but a part. To teach this truth, nature 
implants a feeling for its loveliness in the 
heart of the Savage and the child. To illus- 
trate this truth a Newton investigates the 
laws of the universe. And thus the purpose 
of man is attained : to comprehend the moving 
spirit of Creation and to rejoice in his knowl- 
edge of it. The consolation that this af- 
fords can not be overstated. He who has 
not experienced emotions of this order may 
consider my phrases empty: he who will at- 
tempt to enter that lofty region of feeling 
and thought will soon see an adumbration, at 
least, of the truth of what I say. For every 
man is an Antaeus and grows strong in con- 
[152] 



Health and Suggestion 

tact with his mother the earth. Nature af- 
firms the individuality of each human being, 
but in her great and austere presence the lit- 
tle passions of the flesh and the world are 
stilled. 

Converse with nature effects all that we 
have demanded of man in the foregoing 
pages. For nature works upon the whole 
man. It fills his imagination with noble and 
refreshing images; it circumscribes and 
strengthens his will; its mighty silence calms 
him ; its workings, infinite yet curbed by eter- 
nal law, induce thoughts that are vital and 
energetic; the circling regularity of its appear- 
ances establishes the equilibrium of his soul; 
the multiform glory of its loveliness, whether 
in leaf or star, puts mean anxieties and mor- 
bid preoccupations to flight; its greatness 
raises us above ourselves until all our feeling, 
our thinking, and our desire merge in a 
submission to the divine order of the All. 
Thus nature becomes religion and the last 
and loftiest synthesis of life is complete. 

[153] 



Health a n r d Suggestion 

It will now be clear that all the efforts of 
the human spirit are essentially one — 
whether expressed through philosophy, art, 
ethics, social culture or spiritual healing. 
Nevertheless, this recognition of the oneness 
of life must not deter us from the cultivation 
of our particular and specific fields of inter- 
ests which will finally merge, if but faithfully 
tended, into the harmony of the universe. 

These reflections could become endless if 
pursued in every direction possible. I con- 
tent myself, however, with recommending, as 
a commentary upon this chapter, a book that 
truth, nature and religion seem themselves to 
have written, namely, the Meditations of 
Marcus Aurelius. All that remains for me 
is to summarize as briefly and practically as 
may be the reflections of the foregoing pages. 



[154] 



XI 

SUMMARY 

REFLECTIONS concerning that which, 
in the twilight of self-analysis, we call 
the connection between soul and body, 
are futile or even dangerous unless they are 
consciously made with some practical end in 
view. From this standpoint it will not, per- 
haps, be unwelcome to our readers if we sum- 
marize — in aphoristic form — the results 
of our investigations. 

First, however, it will be well to offer a 
few remarks that could not, fittingly, have 
been made before. 

The first condition of man's soul gaining 
a mastery over his body and thus preserving 
the integrity and energy of his life is that he 
believe in the possibility of such a process. 

[155] 



Health and Suggestion 

Theoretically its possibility may, no doubt, 
be demonstrated. It seemed better to us to 
let the proof be a practical one. In addition 
to the instances given many others might 
have been cited. A few of these may be 
added now. 

Mead records the case of a woman who, 
suffering from an abdominal dropsy com- 
bined with marasmus — a thoroughly physi- 
cal affliction ! — was cured by having - her 
thoughts energetically directed toward a cer- 
tain object. He records another case of a 
woman who, in a state of decline, was freed 
from her most distressing symptoms by real- 
izing, with a deep sense of its sinfulness, the 
misguided conduct of her youth. It was a 
true triumph of learning and of learned in- 
terests when Corning was healed of a violent 
fever by the pleasure he took in conversing 
with a fellow-scholar. Most of these in- 
stances happen by chance, that is, without con- 
scious forethought. In Herz's invaluable 
treatise on dizziness, however, various exam- 



Health and Suggestion 

pies are adduced in which similar results were 
gained by the physician's wise forethought. 
Nor is this all. I ventured to attribute to the 
spirit power even over life and death. And 
I can quote at least one authenticated case 
where that power was exercised. It is given 
in the Austrian Medical Year-books (XIV.4.) 
according to the relation of the British physi- 
cian, Dr. Cheyne. The case is that of 
a certain Colonel Townshend who, at will, 
lay down and suspended all signs of life. 
His pulse ceased beating; a mirror held be- 
fore his face recorded no respiration. Half 
an hour later his heart would begin to beat, 
his pulse to throb, his* breath to come and 
go. In a short while he would converse with 
the attendant physicians. — But we desire, at 
this point, not to multiply proof, but to re- 
capitulate. 

The belief in the healing power of the soul 
once thoroughly established, the next step for 
the individual must be to learn to regard him- 
self objectively. A difficult problem! For 

[157] 



Health and Suggestion 

we are not to practice the meticulous self- 
observation of the hypochondriac, but to turn 
upon ourselves a serene look, even one of 
good-humored irony, such as results from any 
true philosophy and from any healthy ethical 
view-point. 

When we come to regard ourselves in this 
manner — analyzing the stimuli in us that 
lead to active self-expression — we discern 
something in us that wills, and something that 
thinks. This method of analysis we have 
pursued and have discovered certain necessary 
principles of a healthy life. Turn your im- 
agination toward the beautiful and joyful; 
nourish your emotions on what is lofty and 
serene ; train both by a contemplation of great 
art. Cleanse, strengthen and ennoble the will 
and let it impel the ego. Self-restraint — 
that is the great discipline which moral and 
physical health demands. And self-restraint 
can be achieved only by the law that man en- 
forces upon himself. He who desires to be 
healthy, spiritually and physically, must, in 

[158] 



Health and Suggestion 

some deeply earnest hour, have determined to 
rule himself and he must be true to this de- 
termination throughout life. He will experi- 
ence relapses, without doubt. But steady, 
willing and steady practice will make each 
step easier, until the final victory is gained. 
Hence it is man's duty to lay this categori- 
cal imperative upon himself, and to oppose 
this new and stronger I to the indecision that 
may come upon him. Similarly a distraught 
state of the soul must be met by a collection 
of all the faculties. He who is a slave of 
evil habits must tear himself free, and he who 
is at the mercy of the moment — let him 
turn stringently to the habit of righteousness. 
Let us develop in ourselves the might of 
thought and let the understanding be fixed 
upon the ego. Thus that knowledge of self 
which is analogous to the restraint of the will 
can come into being. To these should be 
added such genuine and vital science as will 
teach us the divinity of knowledge. And the 
highest knowledge, teaching us to merge the 

[159] 



Health and Suggestion 

conception of self into the idea of the All, 
leads us finally to the bosom of that living 
faith wherein alone are enduring serenity and 
cloudless health. Only he who has become 
small in his own esteem can feel that which 
is lofty and can be reached by it. Therefore 
let us hold in our hearts that beautiful prayer 
" for a clean spirit and great thoughts." 

Repose, inner and outer, is the first and 
most indispensable curative of human ills. 
In many cases it alone will suffice ; in the rest 
it will be an invaluable aid of other means; 
in all it will prove the best preventative. 
And this repose is of the spirit. The study 
of nature will induce it most certainly, for 
which reason that study is more to be com- 
mended to sensitive natures than the passion- 
ate zest and partisanship engendered by the 
contemplation of history. 

One's temperament is to be curbed and 
balanced by the corrective of conflicting pre- 
occupations. Thus the active man should 
strive to think; the thoughtful man to act. 
[160] 



Health and Suggestion 

The passions should not be smothered and 
with them the hidden seeds and essences of 
life and health. They should rather be bal- 
anced, moderated, and ruled. Let the active 
passions and emotions be given free rein, but 
the depressing ones be vigorously curbed. 
Courage, joy and hope — this is the trinity 
of health. Culture is to be achieved by the 
tone and the direction we give our inclina- 
tions. This is the method of God. And 
our purpose has been to achieve the culture 
of the body through the spirit. The proper 
tempering of our natures is to be brought 
about by a proper balance of contrasting con- 
ditions. Thus joy is to alternate with sor- 
row, tension with relaxation, thoughtfulness 
with that appropriate folly which Horace 
commends. These states and activities will 
relieve and complement each other like the 
colors of a skillful painting. And no spir- 
itual illness will assail him who is so pene- 
trated by a sense of this necessity of change 
that he will 2 if need be, call even painful mem- 
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Health and Suggestion 

ories and sorrow itself to his aid. This 
would be the place, too, where I might dis- 
cuss the changes of mood induced in the soul 
by the alternation of universal phenomena, 
by the change of day and night, of morning, 
noon and evening. But here a hint must 
suffice. 

To him who has already fallen a prey to 
hypochondria we can only repeat the counsel : 
to turn his attention from the close narrow- 
ness of himself to the spectacle of the race's 
universal joy and sorrow. In sympathy with 
his kind he will cease to pity himself or, at 
least, learn to deserve the sympathy of his 
fellow-men. In view of the great develop- 
mental processes which society is now under- 
going, this other-regarding attitude rises to 
the dignity of a sacred duty. Nor is it as dif- 
ficult of achievement as the confirmed egoist 
would have us think. For so soon as we 
enter utterly into another's condition, it 
ceases to be alien and becomes our own. 

And finally: In the loveliness of nature, 
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Health a n'd Suggestion 

the everduring and lifegiving, let every un- 
blessed soul find or prepare him the healing 
balm that is denied to no creature. Amid the 
boundless multiformity of human character 
and fate let him find the norm which it is 
his to reach. And, having discerned it, let 
him but strive to be and to remain himself 
— sincerely, truly, immediately, as is the 
Deity's creative word. 



1 163 1 



LEAVES FROM A DIARY 

HE who desires to keep body and soul 
in perfect health must learn early to 
concern himself with the general af- 
fairs of mankind. 



Often observing myself I have found 
thought, even in the most turbid mood, free 
and clear and forever unassailable by the 
external. But I could not translate it into 
emotion or project it in an action. 



You desire to learn the art of prolonging 
life? Let us rather teach him who truly 
knows life the art to endure it. 



To continue to observe, to think, to learn 

[i6 4 ] 



Health and Suggestion 

— that alone can arouse our sympathy for 
the life of man; that alone can keep the cur- 
rent of our own life in its course. 



In the bosom of each soul slumbers the ter- 
rible seed of madness, and we must use all ac- 
tive and serene powers to keep it from awak- 
ening. 



The dreary and ignoble skepticism of the 
worldling is mere weakness. For every one 
can resign himself to those difficulties against 
which the strong man fights but which faith 
alone can conquer. Imperfectly educated 
physicians are usually skeptics. 



Cultivate the beautiful. Beauty nourishes 
both goodness and health. 



Seek such society as leaves you stronger to 
continue your chosen work. The society that 

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Health and Suggestion 

leaves you weak and empty should be fled 
like a contagion. 



A moderate optimism not only results from 
every sound view of life, but is also the con- 
dition of the soul's healing effort. If you 
are dissatisfied with the universe and hence 
with yourself, your soul will be corroded by 
wretched brooding and your inner health will 
be lost. 



We should treat ourselves as a certain phy- 
sician is said to have treated his patients: 
those who were incurable lost their lives ; they 
never lost hope. 



" I don't know why, but I should regard 
a black poison with more horror than I do 
this clear liquid." Thus Merrimee makes a 
girl speak who is about to poison herself. 
The remark holds a weighty lesson. Pain 
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Health and Suggestion 

and pleasure depend upon the colors which 
our souls lend the unavoidable. 



A philosophy which always contemplates 
death is false. True philosophy is the wis- 
dom of life and takes no account of death. 



Given time, man can become the master of 
any circumstance, be it through comprehen- 
sion or absorption. This process is analo- 
gous to the body's becoming used to poisons. 



The human soul can not deny that its hap- 
piness depends, in the end, upon the enlarge- 
ment of its innermost essence and possessions. 
If any cultured person be asked when he was 
most happy, he will confess it to have been 
in the season of his youth when every day 
added new worlds to his horizon, new stars 
to his intellectual heaven. As one gets old, 
this blessedness is more sparingly granted. 

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Health and Suggestion 

Mortal knowledge has, after all, a definite 
limit. Thus our age must seek strength and 
content in meditating on what lies beyond. 



Life is not a dream. It becomes a dream 
through the guilt of man's soul which will 
not heed the cry of the awakener. 



" How shall I will, dear doctor, since it 
is the very power to will that I lack? " 

" If you are lacking to yourself, dear pa- 
tient, what am I to prescribe for you but — 
yourself ? " 



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wESSSL 0F CONGRESS 



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